The Kadaitcha Curse Page 7
With one eel and some broken egg shells to show for their few hours hunting, Arunta and Burnum walked back to their camp.
The shadow of the great mountain stretched far across the plain when the brothers reached the casuarina woodland and the small group of dwellings that was their home until the kurli time, the hot months, ended.
Their camp was not very far from the Taylor homestead. Edward Taylor had moved into the area thirteen summers earlier and settled with his wife. Grandmother Mirrin had told the boys the story of their first meeting with the white settlers.
Their tribe had returned to their camp after a season of hunting in a different place. In their absence, several white families had laid claim to various tracts of the rich grazing land. At first the tribe hid in bushes and watched from a distance as cattle grazed the ground around their old campsite. Eventually one of the elders decided that they would chase the animals away and reclaim their place. Trouble started when one hot-headed warrior decided to celebrate the return home with a feast – of beef.
“That white fella will not be happy to learn we have killed one of his herd,” Mirrin warned Yuka, but Yuka was determined to give the settlers a message; that this was aboriginal land.
Mirrin was right. The next day Mr Taylor rode into the camp. Armed with a rifle, he was not expecting any resistance from the tribe. Nor did he meet any; they knew the power of the weapon he carried. He spoke to them sternly and although his words were difficult for many in the tribe to understand he knew enough of the local language to make his message clear – You can hunt all the kangaroo you like, you can feast on emu, but leave my cattle alone. If I have to come back there will be plenty of trouble.
The tribe was angry. Mirrin tried to settle them by saying that, since he knew some of their language, he was probably one of the better white fellas. Yuka and some others, however, were not convinced and when he returned on his horse-drawn dray some days later they armed themselves with spears and surrounded him. It was not until he raised his empty hands that they noticed he was unarmed.
“My wife,” he said urgently, “My wife, she needs help. Pregnant… Nu-yawuy.”
This was a very different meeting to their first. Far from being angry, the farmer was pleading for help. He went onto explain, using a mix of English and local dialect, that his wife was pregnant and very close to giving birth. She had developed a fever and was very sick.
Mirrin understood better than the others what he was saying and sprang into action gathering some of her medicines and climbed onto the back of the dray. “Kira, dinya,” she commanded. Passing baby Arunta to Yuka, Kira, who herself was pregnant, did as she was told and joined her mother.
When they reached the homestead the sick woman was not in her bed. Frantically the farmer called her name and searched in every part of the cottage lest, in her delirium, she had hidden herself in a cupboard or under a bed.
The search proved futile until Mirrin looked out through the window and saw that the river passed close by the house.
“Your wife will be there, near the water,” she pointed.
They hurried down to the stream and found Martha Taylor lying in the shade of a willow tree that overhung the water. Her body was still. Even for a white woman, Mirrin thought, her skin was pale. The farmer knelt beside his wife and took her hand. Her eyes opened to the sound of his voice.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and breathed her last.
Mr Taylor was loud in his distress, screaming at the lifeless body, at the trees and at the sky as if to warn the gods to bring her back or suffer his wrath.
“Labingan!” shouted Mirrin trying to draw him back from his anger. “Baby! We will save baby. Get knife.”
The urgency in her voice seemed to shock the man in silence but he responded only by collapsing on the ground and sobbing. Kira ran to the house and soon came back with the knife and some linen.
Edward Taylor’s crying only stopped when Mirrin presented him with his baby daughter.
Clare, whom the tribe called Kaburra, a name given her by Mirrin, was cared for by a wet nurse from the tribe. In the years that followed the clan and the Taylors had come to consider themselves friends. When not away hunting, some of the men worked for the farmer.
The women took turns caring for the young girl. As his cattle business grew and his property expanded, many in the tribe found work herding, cooking, cleaning or another of the many jobs that were necessary to keep the farm going.
Yuka, however, was an exception. He stubbornly refused to accept any part of the white man’s way of life. When away during the hunting season all of the men would wear a traditional garment, which more often than not meant they went almost naked with a small animal skin for a loin cloth. When at the camp, however, they would dress in some English style clothing; trousers, and sometimes even a shirt. Yuka, though, was a proud aboriginal and although he did not stand in their way he could not understand why others would so willingly “enslave” themselves.
“We are not slaves,” they would retort when he went into one of his raves. “Boss Taylor pays us for the work we do. We get good money.”
“And what do you do with the money?” Yuka would ask.
“We buy food and clothes.”
“Look at me!” he would grimace. “I am not naked. I am not hungry. And I do not work for the gubbah!”
These arguments were never resolved. At times like this others in the tribe dismissed Yuka as garanggi, mad, or say he was algona lagiban, the man from the mountain. This reference to the fact that he was not born into this tribe was intended as an insult. Yuka, however, was never offended by it. Why would he be when the great mountain and Mura-mura, the Tree of Spirits that grew there, was his ancestral home?
However, despite Yuka’s reluctance to accept anything to do with the settlers, his wife, Kira, their two sons, and Kira’s mother, Mirrin, had developed a strong relationship of friendship and trust with Mr Taylor and Clare. In many ways Clare Taylor, Burnum and Arunta were children of two worlds. Clare was a white girl with a white father and, it seemed, many black mothers. And the two boys were like her brothers. They treated her as they would a sister. They taught her the ways of the land and included her in their adventures and games. She, in return, would share with them her books and her father would teach them all the magic of reading and numbers.
It was this close relationship that brought the farmer and his daughter to the campfire on this special night. To farewell Yuka and to wish Arunta a safe return was a responsibility of all the family, including the Taylors.
As the boys entered the camp, Kalu, Arunta’s pet albino dingo, ran to greet them. The fire had already burned down to coals and the gangurru was cooking. They would feast tonight on kangaroo meat. The potatoes and onions brought by the Taylors would also go down well.
While Burnum accepted the chiding delivered by Grandmother Mirrin, Arunta was more concerned for his father. Yuka had grown very sick and weak. All who were gathered there knew that this time would come; the time when Yuka’s worsening sickness would take him away from the tribe and back to his first home. Still, it made Arunta very sad to see his father sitting away from the activity and chatter of the camp.
Arunta, with Kalu at his side, walked over to where Yuka sat propped against the big rock.
“We will leave tomorrow,” Yuka said quietly as Arunta squatted beside him. Arunta did not reply. They watched in silence as the women fussed over the fire and prepared some other things to go with the meat. Kira, the boys’ mother, rolled some damper dough while others ground berries and seeds, sewed and shared tales of their day.
No one spoke of Yuka. The elders knew well the story of this stubborn, but brave and once strong man who, when still a boy, came down from the great mountain and wandered, near death, onto their land so many years ago. Over time their respect had grown and now their sadness was almost unbearable. The time they put into the preparation of the meal along with the singing an
d the dancing that would follow would speak what was in their hearts.
The breeze changed slightly and the smoke and the smell of cooking meat drifted across, beckoning them to take their place around the fire.