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by Larissa Behrendt

  That’s why, when the High Court overturned the doctrine of terra nullius, Chief Justice Brennan spoke about fracturing the skeleton of the law. He had to explain when the courts can and can’t move away from what they have said in the past and then determine how far they can go if they want to take the law in a different direction. But this reversal of law and history would not come until after I had finished law school.

  You might think that today it doesn’t matter, that people never worry about skin colour the way they used to. But it does in ways that you may not see and in lessons that are humiliating. I will tell you just one lesson I learnt at university: no matter how many degrees you have, how clever you are, how well you speak, how many books you read, you cannot get away from the skin thing.

  I was taught this lesson by Toby Mitchell who was in my Evidence class and with whom I had several conversations in the law library during study sessions devoid of any mention of the rules of evidence. I thought he was handsome with his sandy brown hair and blue eyes and I found his confidence attractive. I felt happy when I saw him and thought about him every night before I fell asleep. I would recount our conversations word for word to Kate, analysing evidence of hidden meanings and messages. His upbringing had been different to mine, with private schools and ski trips and holidays to Europe. I felt the difference between us acutely when I first visited his parents’ expansive house in a wealthy eastern Sydney suburb. Mum’s house could have comfortably fit in his garage. I was nervous just walking on the perfectly polished floors. As I stood in the kitchen while Toby was out of the room, I started talking to his mother. I was trying to be friendly as she worked in the kitchen, cooking a meal that looked more elaborate than anything my mother would prepare. When Toby returned he whispered to me, very politely, that I shouldn’t distract the staff when they were working.

  I had been waltzing the courtship dance of movies and dinners with Toby for about a month when we went to a video evening at a friend’s place, where the conversation turned to the recent bicentenary of European invasion. There had been scores of protests from Aboriginal people all over mainland Australia, culminating in a large march in Sydney to show we will never be silently folded into a more convenient telling of history. Many Australians supported this display of resistance and survival, but there were others who resented it.

  “They’re all half-castes,” Toby’s friend Justin said. “Trouble stirrers. Most of them are dole bludgers who like living in filth. Feral. The real ones don’t behave like that. Give them some metho and they’ll be happy.” Toby’s friends giggled at the comment in a carefree manner as I felt myself freezing up with hurt.

  “They’re always complaining. They want handouts. Want something for nothing. Think that just because they are black that they can take things away from honest and hardworking people.”

  “They should thank us,” Justin said. “We saved them from a stone-age existence.”

  “I feel sorry for them. It must be hard to go from being primitive to being civilised. It is no wonder that many of them can’t make the transition,” interjected Francesca, Justin’s girlfriend.

  “Those bleeding-heart attitudes are part of the problem. You’re too soft. But you’ll change your tune when they make a land claim on your house,” replied Justin. I looked to Toby for consolation but he was smirking in agreement.

  And then the topic changed to something else.

  I was distressed by Toby’s attitude but said nothing until we were in the car on the way home. He noticed that I was quiet and obviously upset. “What’s wrong?” he asked, genuinely concerned. Not knowing quite how to put all the questions I wanted to make him answer and all the facts I wanted to lay before him, I simply said, “How can you have those views about Aboriginal people?”

  “What do you care?” he asked. But as soon as he asked, his eyes seemed to indicate that he realised the answer. You can see a lot in people’s eyes. And he knew what I saw in his eyes. He said, “I thought you were Spanish. You look Spanish. I didn’t know you were a coon.” After a painful silence, all he could think of to say to console me was, “Don’t worry, you can’t tell.” And his words took me back to the classroom, all those years ago: Good. There are too many of them.

  Toby never got over the shock of finding out that I was Aboriginal. My exoticness had suddenly turned itself into traits too tainted for him to deal with. He never called me again. He avoided me around campus for nearly a year, too embarrassed to speak to me. I can’t tell you how dirty he made me feel, how untouchable. It was the first time I really felt that my skin was made from dirt since Natalie Fletcher had called me an ugly black spider. But this time I felt too humiliated to tell anybody so they could give me a pep talk. And you can see why encounters like those with the woman in the post office, who in my mind looks like Nancy Kerrigan, are just everyday occurrences. Like Kate said, the things you learn at university are never the things you think you are going to learn.

  I often felt that my boyfriends thought my Aboriginality was a symbol, of rebellion or tolerance. Like Phillip Knight who saw it as a way to rile his father up at Sunday family lunch when he wanted to know why Aborigines should have land rights. Or Keith Duncan, who kept telling me it didn’t matter to him so often that it was obvious it did. Others, like Chris Anderson, saw it as a way of getting into a culture that they romanticised, always wanting to go to Aboriginal plays and see Aboriginal bands as though holding my hand was a pass to get in. I grew suspicious of any importance given to my ancestry.

  When I left law school, I began working at a law firm that specialised in land claims. In New South Wales, legislation had been put in place that allowed Aboriginal people to claim back Crown land. Even though it was promoted as recompense for lost land, these legislative schemes made clear there was no Indigenous right to land independent of the statutory entitlement. And they often masked further acts of dispossession. Although in New South Wales it was said that the Land Rights Act was for the benefit of Aboriginal people, it only gave access to about six thousand acres. At the same time it became law, another piece of legislation was passed to remedy a bureaucratic mistake. Since 1969, the Lands Department had acted for the government when it continually took away Aboriginal reserve land and gave it to white farmers. It turned out it wasn’t the Lands Department’s to give; the title belonged to the Aborigines Protection Board so all those transfers of land were illegal, all twenty-five thousand acres of it.

  Land rights fostered great antagonism within the non-Indigenous community, who resented what they saw as Aboriginal people ’getting something for nothing’ and a threat to their own title to land (even though land rights legislation ensured that this would not happen). For example, the Western Australian Chamber of Mines ran a virulent campaign against land rights legislation which in that state ensured its defeat. It was an anti-land-rights campaign focused on creating fear within the general population by implying — erroneously — that people’s homes would be at risk. “Your right of ownership could be under threat,” their propaganda thundered. A television commercial, playing on this fear, showed black hands building a brick wall across a map of Western Australia with an accompanying sign: “Keep out — this land is part of Western Australia under Aboriginal land claim.” These fears and phobias resurfaced in the debates around recognition of native title. They certainly seemed to work on the Tobys and Justins of the world.

  In the cases I worked on we claimed vacant Crown land for our clients. The Minister then objected to the claim, saying that the land was ineligible to be given to Aboriginal communities because, although the land wasn’t being used, it was needed for an essential public purpose. He would give us a list of reasons — defence, environmental protection, housing. Then we would have to show that his decision was not based on good faith, that land could not be used for environmental protection and housing at the same time, especially when it was basically swamp.

  Having said that, the communities that got land back could d
o good things for their community with it. Build houses on it. Set up community centres. And as we started to try to implement and expand the findings in the Mabo case, we found that the case was not the trigger to get land — and water and fishing rights — back for Aboriginal people that we had first thought it would be. I was coming to the conclusion that the land rights system, with its secure tender, was a better outcome than native title. Kingsley is far more meticulous in his thinking, weighing up the pros and cons before making a decision. I tend to go with my gut feeling. With me, it’s hit or miss. With Kingsley, it is a carefully calculated aim; but that is why he is such a good lawyer. At the time I am writing this, I do not know whether the courts will continue to narrowly define native title and whether, in the years to come, a federal government will pass amendments to the Native Title Act that will extinguish and erode native title rights across the country. I cannot see into the future like Kate can.

  Kate did write her travel books. I received my signed copy of Single in Shanghai on the eve I was leaving for Paris. Not Another Humorous Falafel Story on her travels in the Middle East has recently been sent to her publishers. Kate followed the paths of the women travel writers she so admired. Her view of the world is outward looking, analytical, perceptive. She is still seeking to draw me out of my thoughts and into the world around me. She was proud of me when I went to study in Paris. “I was beginning to think you would never leave Sydney,” she wrote from Prague.

  I didn’t know that moving to another country would change me so completely. And I have to confess that the first meal I ate was at McDonald’s, to see what it would taste like, whether it would be different or similar to what I was used to. So you see, in many ways, I am a person who fears change.

  But it was as though, in new surroundings, in streets crowded with disjointed houses, almost crushed together, I became a new Candice. I didn’t decide that I was going to change myself, “reinvent myself” as Kate would say, yet I transformed into some new kind of me. When you travel you feel closer to the things you leave behind. It was as though there were some things, deep inside me, that were waiting to come out but couldn’t while I stayed in familiar surroundings. No wonder Kate is never ready to come home.

  In France, I never could understand why the balconies of the quaintly squat houses were all on the first floors. If it were my house, I would want to live on the top storey, where I would have a view across the tile and terracotta roofs. Christoph, my boyfriend, would tell me that the preference would be for the floor of the house that would require the least effort to walk through. When we travelled across the Channel, he used the English word ’preference’ a lot. He’d say: “I prefer the steak,” when ordering from the menu. It was true; he preferred the steak to all the other things listed. Or he would say, “I will take the steak,” as though it were going to accompany us on the trip back to Paris. But he would laugh almost every time I spoke French. “Très charmant” he would laugh.

  Christoph says that we were destined to meet even though it seemed like the strangest of coincidences. He was studying on the same program as me. We got to talking about books and it turned out he had never read Wuthering Heights. And so I arrived at our next class together with a copy as a present for him. I thought nothing of buying it — I had never worked out how much I was spending. I could never make the exchange in my head, and the amount of francs always seemed so high that it never seemed as though I was spending real money. It turned out it was his birthday. He must have known that this was a coincidence because he had never told me when his birthday was. But Christoph read this special symbolism into the whole thing and seemed to think there was some kind of destiny surrounding us. It is the old story where two people live the same events but tell them differently.

  I’ve always wanted to be loved by someone. I wanted what was in the novels I read. I wanted my own Mr Knightley, Mr Darcy or Colonel Brandon. I don’t think you can love the books that I loved as much as I did and not want the romance and the passion inside their covers for yourself. And yet, when Christoph came into my life, I seemed to do nothing but resist him. He never thought of me as ’other’, exotic. Being Aboriginal didn’t mean the same things to him that it mean to Toby Mitchell. He could see past my skin, just like I felt when I put myself in my favourite stories. It was the situation I had for so long dreamed of finding myself in and I don’t understand why I try to deny myself the happiness of having him in my life, why I am so afraid to let him make me whole.

  I came back to Australia without Christoph but with a restlessness, abuzz with all the things I had experienced in a year away. I was frustrated that people at home were exactly where they were before I had left, stagnant, while I had changed so much. I felt I needed to find something to make me feel like I was back again, that I fitted in. So when my father said that he was travelling to visit Uncle Henry, I thought I might find some of that stability if I went back to the place where my Aboriginal family lived. That maybe I would find the same sense of self and confidence my father had found there.

  31

  1995

  I LOOK TO THE SKY. Its sea and cornflower blues remind me of the flecks of colour in Christoph’s eyes and my thoughts and feelings float as they touch on him. I suddenly feel overwhelmingly happy, liberated from all my denials and resistance to his offers, as though I have surrendered to him and accepted him with one pump of my heart, one squint of my eyes at the sparkling sun. As I stand here, all I have inside me is so strong, so much a part of me, that it could never be erased. No matter where I live or who I live with. That for all the things that change in a different context, there is always a part of me that remains untouchable. I needed to come here to realise that.

  As I walk slowly across this remote edge of Dungalear Station, I feel fated to have come to this place with the same assurance that Kate has when she looks into the future. I sense that after my grandmother left this spot the land just waited patiently for me to arrive. This place seems full of history, of lingering moments. Too sleepy for progress, it feels as though everything has collapsed in on itself, as if everyone who has been here throughout time now exists side by side.

  So it is that I come to stand on the same spot where my grandmother, Elizabeth Boney, had last seen her brother. The bitterness of what was wrong, what had been cast upon my family, is softened by a sense of triumph. Here now stand three generations of my family, aware of how much has been dislocated and lost, yet still standing on our land, at the place where the rivers meet.

  And that’s how history can tell a story. I can tell you a story of triumph: that to this spot, where my grandmother was torn from, I return, nearly ninety years later, educated and successful. But this history of winners masks the history of losses. For the story of my success is also the story of all that is missing, all that cannot be claimed back. There are the lost members of my family whose lives, thoughts and love I will never know. I can only imagine what has happened to all those who share my blood. All those loves lost to racism.

  Danielle has taken Granny out of the car and given her a seat under the shade of the tree. I feel guilty because I had not thought to help her. I have no older relatives in my life so I do not know what to do to help her. I walk to where Granny is seated and sit beside her. Every time she looks at me, I avert my gaze, pluck at a blade of grass bent in the breeze or look up at the overhanging canopy of leaves as it sways in the wind. It is many stretched minutes until she begins to speak.

  “There,” she says. “That is where Elizabeth’s place was.” I look at the ground where, under the blades of bending grass, there are sticks, bark and pieces of metal firmly planted in the soil, remnants of a home and family.

  “Your grandmother and I were both Dinewan. Garibooli, we called her. Her brother used to call her Booli,” remembers Granny, “back in the days when they used my other name, Karrwi*. Karrwi and Garibooli.”

  “Garibooli,” I whisper into the wind.

  As we rest under the shade of the
trees, Granny tells me the story of the Dinewan:

  Dinewan was acknowledged as being the leader of the birds by all the other birds.

  The Goomblegubbons* were jealous of the Dinewan. The mother of the Goomblegubbons was especially jealous of the mother of the Dinewan. She was also jealous of how high the Dinewan could fly. Dinewan would irritate Goomblegubbon by making a great fuss every time she landed. Goomblegubbon thought that Dinewan was showing off.

  * Karrwi = Eualeyai word for sandalwood

  * goomblegubbons = bustards

  Goomblegubbon used to wonder how she could put an end to the supremacy of the Dinewan. Goomblegubbon had cunning; Dinewan had strength. If Goomblegubbon tried to fight Dinewan, she would lose, but, she thought, if she could injure Dinewan’s wings, Dinewan would not be able to fly.

  One day, Goomblegubbon saw Dinewan coming towards her. Goomblegubbon squatted down into the dirt and folded her wings to make it look like she didn’t have any. She spoke in a friendly way to Dinewan and after a while suggested that Dinewan imitate her. She said: “Every bird can fly. If you are the leader of the birds, you should be able to do without your wings. When birds see that I can do without my wings, they will think that I am clever and make me the leader.”

  Goomblegubbon spoke so persuasively that Dinewan, in her vanity, decided to sacrifice her wings. She spoke this over with her mate and he decided to do the same. They did not want to see Goomblegubbon rule. They also cut the wings off all their children.