Lynnie and me can’t wait to get home to eat a piece of Devon, so we grab a slice each and roll it up and take a bite of yummy meat that makes our tummy happy. Afterwards, we try to wrap the paper around it so no one can tell we raided it.
Just like with the flowers, we always held our breath and prayed that nobody saw us doing it. One day, it was me and Lynnie’s turn to cash the bottles in and we got caught by some of the town boys who made our life a misery, teasing us.
‘Where’s your baby?’
‘She’s asleep. Piss off!’
‘Come on, let’s see, where’s your baby?’
‘Lynnie, tell ’em to piss off.’
They stood in front of us; we stood in front of the pram, trying real hard to stop ’em seeing what was really in there. They tried to pull the blanket from over the bottles. We covered the bottles up so people would think we really did have a baby sleeping there. They pushed us outta the way and started to laugh at us.
‘Haha, your baby’s so pretty, isn’t she?’
‘What’s her name?’ they all laughed.
We swore at them all the time while they tormented us. They wouldn’t go away and leave us alone; we threatened them with our big brothers. They finally went away but were laughing so loud we were sure we could still hear ’em down in the gutters on our way home. Shame job!
But we only stay living in Leeton till the fruit-picking is over, then we head home again.
Back in Condo, Daddy is back with us again. We stay in a house made into a flat just across the road from Meryl; she’s gonna have another baby. School’s okay and the kids are great. We all play together, us Blackfellas. One day, I was mucking around in class and the teacher came up behind me and hit me on the head with a book. I run home to Mummy and dob him in. She was up there at the school the next day, after that teacher. I heard her telling him straight, ‘You don’t hit my daughter. You send a note home to me if she mucks up but don’t you ever hit her or I’ll be back.’ Mummy don’t let no one hit us.
I’m in love with Elvis, still, and some of the other movie stars. I save all my pocket money to buy their magazines, then I rip ’em up and stick ’em up on the wall on my side of the room that me and Lynnie share. It’s the first time in a long time that we’ve got a room to ourselves. Mummy and Daddy have a room and the boys, too. We think it’s so great. We tell the boys they’re not allowed in our room.
28
Morisset Mental Hospital
It’s 1968 and I’m ten. We’re gonna go and see our Dad again. We haven’t seen him for a long while; Kevin and me are real excited.
Daddy’s driving us up to see him so we’re all really happy. This place isn’t as scary as the last time; it’s much friendlier and the people are nice, too.
We got to sit with him and talk to him and touch him! There was nothing stopping us. No walls or bars or wire mesh, just us and him sitting around this table. I was allowed to sit on his lap for the first time in my life. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he held me tight around the waist. I touched his hair. It’s like mine—it’s got curls, kinda like ringlets but he has more of them. I told him the story of Meryl and Maureen wrapping my hair with brown-paper strips and how, next morning, I had fuzzy hair and the kids called me a golliwog.
We had the best visit! We’re real happy to see him. His eyes were still sad but they sparkled like mine when he got excited and laughed, and I could tell he’s really happy. We talked and talked and held hands. We told him about school and all the rest of the family. He told us he’d be coming home one day. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave that day. I reckon my Dad didn’t want us to go at all. I could tell.
We argue about who looks like him the most and who’s got the blackest hair as well, and we both win. My hair is black and a little bit curly like his; Kevin’s is just black and straight. Mummy is happy, too. We all tell him how much we love him and miss him but then it’s time to leave again. During my childhood, we only ever visited my father three times: the first time in Grafton Jail; this second visit in Morisset Mental Hospital; and a third time, later on, is at Long Bay Jail.
This trip has been so exciting and wonderful, and we seen all these new things and did things that we never do at home; we can’t wait to tell the others. Another long drive in the car and then we’re home again back in Condo, back where we belong. We run and kiss everyone, excited. Lots of family come over that night for a big feed and to find out how our trip went. Hooray!
In June 1968, he was moved again, to Long Bay Jail.
29
We got grandparents
Boy, I think when I hear the news, me and Kevin must be getting grown-up. Mummy asks me if I remember the port full of clothes that we had in Leeton before our hut burnt down when we were picking and Blue saved Maureen. I tell her, yes. She reminds me that they were from our grandparents. She tells us we’re going to go and see them but we’re not allowed to mention our father to them.
Mummy takes us over to where they live in Gulgong, the town on the ten-dollar note. She sleeps at their house for one night to settle us in, then she goes back home. Our grandparents don’t say a word about our father, neither, but Nanna tells us about her daughter, Goma, who was our mother. She shows us pictures. She says not to mention Goma in front of Pop because he’d get upset. And she shows us pictures that Mummy has sent them of me and Kevin growing up. On the back of them, Mummy has written:
Kerry (in front) and Kevin 2nd on right, playing marbles.
‘To our Nanna and Pop
With love,
Love Kevin and Kerry xxxx.’
Kerry aged one.
‘To Nanna and Pop
With love,
Love Kerry xxx.’
Nobody tells us how my mother died. Mummy would’ve told my grandparents they weren’t to say anything to us. Mummy, when she wants to, she can put the fear of God in anyone. I reckon even God himself if he was real.
I have lots of uncles here in Gulgong that are my mother’s brothers. My favourite is Uncle Bob. He lets me drive his ute; I have to sit on his lap ’cause I’m too little. I’m nearly eleven and my feet don’t touch the floor but I’m allowed to steer and change the gears.
In Gulgong, Kevin stays up at Uncle Lester’s house most of the time. They have a son called Garry so the two boys play together. Anyway, they don’t like me much and I don’t like any of them much, neither, ’cause they pick on me. And my Aunty, she’s always bossing me around, makes me wash up when the other kids are in the lounge room. Kevin and Garry never seem to wash up, only me. I ask her why and she tells me, ‘Boys don’t wash up, only girls’. I think, what a lotta bull; the boys gotta wash up at home. Mummy says, ‘We all gotta learn how to cook and clean so we can take care of ourselves’.
I can’t say this to her, though; I reckon she’d go crook on me. Then, I’d have to tell Mummy and then Mummy would go after her, and then there’d be trouble. And I don’t want no trouble so nobody can tell Mummy I’ve been bad and I won’t ever have to go away with the Welfare.
I stay with Nanna and Pop and Uncle Bob most of the time and they love me lots. Nanna says not to worry about the others, they don’t like girls much. Nanna talks just a little about my mother when she was little and she shows me photos of the family.
I had a really good visit in Gulgong as I had a friend there, down the road from Nanna and Pop. We’d go swimming just about every day at the pool, and when we didn’t do that, Nanna would take me to the shop and buy me and Kevin a little something like a lolly or a packet of special biscuits. Nanna would introduce us to the people she knew as, ‘These are Goma’s two’. She seemed real proud of us and our Mum.
Her and Pop even worried about what we was gonna eat for breakfast. They went and bought all these different packets of cereals so that we could try them all to find the one we liked best. Boy, we were spoilt!
We go to Sydney with Nanna and visit more of my mother’s family there. My other family is big, too, but not as b
ig as my family back home. I like my cousins in Sydney and have a great time but I wanna go home pretty soon; I miss Mummy so bad and I want my real family. We stay in touch with Nanna and Pop always but I don’t remember another visit with them during the school holidays.
30
Koora: the little town on the railway track
Our big brothers have been trying to find another place for us to live. We need to buy a house so we can keep the Welfare from our door. One day, they tell Mummy they found us a place in a little town called Koorawatha. It’s seventeen miles from Cowra and twenty-seven miles from Young. It’s a good spot; we can pick the tomatoes one way and the cherries the other. And the prunes are close by and the tomatoes at Goolagong as well. We’ll have the paddocks surrounding us; we’ll always get work.
Mummy has worked and saved and now she goes to the bank to see if they will lend her the rest of the money to buy the house. They do and we all celebrate—our very own house again! I hear the others talking how the bank don’t lend money to women by themselves but they lent money to her. It’s a big deal for us, especially since she’s Aboriginal—she’s well-respected and liked here in Condo. We’re so lucky and so rich—a house all our own— and we’ve got the smartest and bestest Mother in the world. Daddy hasn’t been with us for a long time now. We don’t really worry; Mummy looks after us.
We’re moving. We’re gonna live in Koorawatha or Koora for short. We’ve got our house and it even has some acres to go with it! Mummy’s so proud and so are we. Now, we don’t have to travel so much to pick the fruit and the Welfare can’t get us; we’ll have our own house and he can’t say nothing. And we don’t have to live in flats no more or other people’s houses; and we got the road to play on like we did on the Island as well so it’s nearly as special as the Island was.
It’s a bit rundown but it’s gonna be a happy house; all of us are gonna be living there. Uncle Raymond comes to help us move. Him and Paddy do all the heavy lifting. Mummy helps as much as she can. We all do. Maureen’s here, too, doing her bit. They put all the furniture inside the house and our clothes are packed away.
And we have a bathtub, too, with a little heater connected to it that you light to make a fire so you can have hot water. This one’s not like the one Mummy has outside to do our washing in. That copper’s like a giant pot and she lights the fire under it and boils our sheets and things so they’re real white and clean. I love coming home and seeing our sheets blowing on our clothesline and I love my bed with nice clean sheets, too.
Uncle Raymond and my brother, Paddy, go up to the pub to have a drink after all the hard work of moving is done. It’s Paddy’s first time in a pub. Mummy let him go for one drink because he’s with Uncle Raymond and he worked so hard moving us in. We don’t have any drink at home. My older brothers are not allowed to bring drink into our house or even come home drunk. Mummy would’ve been real angry if they did.
It’s only a little while later that we hear noises and lots of yelling coming from up the main street. She sends Kevin up on his bike to see what’s happening. She must have known something was wrong because she didn’t wait for him to come back before starting to run in the direction of the noise. Maureen, who’s got a big belly— she’s six months’ pregnant—started trying to run, too, following her. They knew straight away the men were in trouble. Mummy tells us kids to stay. Not to follow ’em. We stay and wait but they don’t come back. Kevin jumps on his bike and follows them, not all the way, just to the park so he can see what’s happening. He comes back.
‘The pub—the whole pub—they’re fighting with them, with Mummy and Maureen and Uncle Raymond and Paddy!!!’
The whole pub! They’re fighting with our family! We run to help and we’re halfway there but they’re already on the way home. The men are smashed up a little bit but they say the other blokes in the pub look worse than they do.
They tell the story of how some blokes in the pub started making comments about Blacks, saying they don’t want no Blacks living in their town and they don’t want Blacks in their pub, either. They fought dirty, too. It wasn’t man-to-man; they were like a pack of dogs on heat, Uncle Raymond said. He called them gutless bastards. They even wanted to fight Mummy and Maureen.
We wonder how a pub full of grown men wanna fight two women and even one that’s gonna have a baby. We’re angry, too, about them trying to bash Paddy and Uncle. We know they can take care of themselves but not when a whole town wants to fight ’em. Uncle Raymond laughs and says, ‘Don’t worry. I had two of ’em on me at one go and I couldn’t move so I bit one man’s ear so bad he’ll probably need stitches.’
‘Serves ’em right. They’re a pack of dogs. Just like a pack of dogs on heat.’
I hope they hurt real bad. Us kids talk about it later and start laughing. Serves them right! We hope Uncle and Paddy flogged ’em really good. That’ll teach ’em for fucking with the Blacks. Us kids all talk about ’em. We can fight with each other—that’s all right—but no one else can. We hate this town already. We’ve only been here a little while, not even a day; just moved in and already they’re causing us heartache.
But it’s wonderful that we got our own house and it’s easier for Mummy, too. If she’s not working, she’s always cooking us a special treat for when we come home from school. She cooks little cakes and pies with custard, too, and I get to have two lots ’cause the other kids don’t get home from school till after me.
Us kids still help Mummy; we try to make things easier for her. Each Sunday, we have to pick a room out and clean it from top to bottom. The kitchen’s the hardest to clean; we have to empty out the food cupboards and the knife-and-fork drawer, and put new newspaper on the shelves to make it all clean and tidy.
I’m twelve now so I go to the primary school here but Lynnie and Kevin gotta travel on the big bus to high school and back again, and that’s a long way. They go twenty-nine miles each way to school and back. It’s twenty-seven miles to Young but they gotta turn off the highway after eighteen miles and go one mile up to Bendick Murrell to pick up the kids there, then travel back down to the highway and keep going to Young. Every day, all that way, fifty-eight miles to school for the round trip.
31
Pay day and trains, and getting shot at
I think Mummy must be getting the pension; every fortnight now she gets a cheque. It’s the first time in our lives that we haven’t had to work our guts out and now we don’t have to travel so much to do the fruit-picking. We can live. When we really need money bad, she sells one of her old coin collections. I know she hates doing that; she knows she’s not gonna get the right amount of money for them off the man that buys them from her.
When pay day comes, Mummy and me catch the train to Cowra to get our groceries. It’s a long way on the train but it’s fun, plus it means I don’t have to go to school. No way would Mummy let me stay home by myself in Koora after I get let out from school at three o’clock.
Koorawatha’s full of people that hate Blacks. Even at school, some of the white kids don’t talk to me. They write my name in the dirt and write things about me there. They make sure the teacher’s not around, and when I walk out of class, there’s a message calling me a Black gin and even some love letters, too. After a few swear words, the kids leave me alone ’cause I can beat most of them in a fight, I reckon, but I’m here by myself and I wish Kevin and Lynnie were here, too—I hate it on my own.
After school, I normally hide in the toilets till they’re all gone and the coast is clear. Today, I start to go to the toilet to hide but then I see Mummy waiting outside in the rain. She’s standing under a tree trying not to get too wet. She has a towel over her shoulders and one for me, too.
I’m torn; I don’t want the other kids to see me but she’s out there getting wet so I run to her and she covers me up with the towel. I give her a cuddle; I’ve got the best mother in the world. She has cooked a cake for me and she’s gonna make me a Milo to warm me up while I dry off.
/> Heather Hampton becomes my best friend. She lives just up the road. Other than her family and a few others, most of the grown-ups here are real mean; they hate us Blacks. Even the policeman, Constable Saunders, he’s as bad as the rest of the town. He ran our dogs over for nothing and they was only little ones. We cried forever. And they did terrible things to the rest of our animals. We had some pigs and somebody came and shot pellets into them, even into their teats. Mummy wouldn’t let me look, but I was so sad. How can people do mean things like that?
One time, one of them even shot at Mummy. We’ve got a cow called Mini Moo, after Lynnie, and she had a calf. One day, Mummy went to feed ’em and the neighbour, Mrs D’Elboux, shot at her. The bullet went through her hair. Mummy went to see Constable Saunders, but he didn’t wanna do nothing about it. He said, ‘I’ll talk to her’. He comes back and says to Mummy that Mrs D’Elboux thought that she was trespassing on their land. Mrs D’Elboux knew it was our land—that’s just an excuse. I hate this town.
Mummy wants her charged with attempted murder.
‘She could’ve killed me!’ she argues.
Constable Saunders still doesn’t want to charge her. Mummy goes to the police station in Cowra and charges her herself. They go to court and Mrs D’Elboux gets community hours’ weekend detention. I think they should’ve made her rot in jail for months but Mummy feels sorry for her; she’s a little bit gwarnnee (mentally ill) and she has a new baby. I don’t feel sorry for her. I hate her for trying to hurt my mother.
The people in this town persecute us: they stalk our house at night—we can hear them outside, laughing and talking, trying to scare us to leave town. When they do this, Mummy walks outside and sings out in a real loud voice, calling them gutless bastards and saying she’ll blow their brains out if she catches them.
None of us kids are allowed to go anywhere after dark by ourselves. We can’t even go out to the toilet at night; even at dusk, we gotta go in twos and Mummy stands at the door and watches, but when it gets later, we use a bucket inside if we need it. We don’t know what them whitefellas’ll do to us if they catch us alone and especially at night, too.
The Cherry Picker's Daughter Page 11
