In 1973 we left our home in the Barossa. Warren had a long-standing yearning for the open road. So intense was this ache that he was prepared to put our farm in mothballs, seize the day and go. A dissatisfaction with the working arrangements between him and his father had exacerbated it. We sold our sheep and pigs, packed up our house and rented it out, bought a caravan and four wheel drive tray top with canopy, said goodbye to our family and friends and with our two children aged three years and twenty one months we set out, heading north, all of us in the single-bench-seated vehicle.
I was mortally afraid. We were going to be away for two years, with no particular plan – other than to see Australia. I cried for two hours as everything I cared about (other than my immediate family) grew further behind.
Warren shared with me years later that he too was anxious but, always the risk-taker, he considered the draw of the adventure greater than the fear. Neither of us had any inkling of the true nature of the Outback. Would we have enough food, water? Our daughter was still in cloth nappies. Would we be warm enough at night? Would the daytime heat be unbearable? No air-conditioning. No mobile phones.
Our destination for the first leg was Yuendumu – an Aboriginal settlement three hundred kilometres north west of Alice Springs in the Tanami desert. Warren had contacted a mate who was living and working there and he had assured Warren there’d be a job for him – building houses for the community.
Our route was via Oodnadatta, the trip long and arduous. No food to be bought for a couple of days along the way but thankfully I had brought bananas, dried fruit, nuts, vegemite and cracker biscuits. Challenges were rife – like backing our caravan onto a train at Maree, as the road ahead was too rough and wet to tow it. There had been heavy inland rain that had made the roads almost impossible to navigate, and sometimes even to find, but driving at snail’s pace we drove for a day until we were through it.
The track from Alice Springs to Yuendumu was so corrugated that we lost a wheel. There was no-one else out there. The wheel locking tab had broken and we were stranded, or so I thought, but Warren found a piece of pipe in his toolbox and fabricated a tab from that. It was here that I began to learn of my husband’s resourcefulness that was needed countless more times over the next two years as we found ourselves broken down and disabled in the back of beyond.
We arrived at the settlement at eleven at night, set up our caravan and put the kids to bed. As we were doing this, there came a beautiful sound out of the bush nearby. The Aboriginal men had been told by our friend that we were coming, and they were singing us a welcome. It was one of the most hauntingly beautiful gifts I have ever received.
We spent three months in this place – an experience that changed us all forever. So many stories to tell of our time there – all of which can be found in my memoir ‘So Big The Land.’
We’d been there a couple of weeks when a special corroboree was planned – for the initiation of fifteen young boys into manhood. Tony, our friend, asked Warren if he’d like to come out that afternoon and help prepare the site for the ceremony that was to take place that night. Tony was considered a brother and had told the blackfellas that Warren was one of HIS brothers, so they graciously invited him to attend the corroboree with Tony. In ignorance of their customs, Warren took me and the kids out there that afternoon to show me the site. As we approached, Tony came running out of the bush waving his arms wildly.
‘Stop. Go back,’ he shouted. ‘Men’s business. No women.’
So Warren turned around, took us back to camp and returned to the bush to help with and then witness one of the most amazing things he had ever seen. To follow is a poem I wrote to document what he saw. It was one of four highly commended poems in the the 2016 Boldrewood Literary Award.
BENEATH THE STARS OF MOTHER COUNTRY
Twilight spreading
Campfires glowing
Smoke assaulting nostrils
Kangaroos lie charred and bloated over beds of coals
while skinny scratching camp-dogs range without intent
Naked children play and laugh
A cryptic Outback sound of hushed contentment
hanging in the air
That night
out bush
fifteen young bucks ready to come in
from three months on their country
learning Dreamtime stories
songs and dances
sacred secret rituals
how to hunt
men’s business
Fire pit lit
Grim father-totems carved with legends standing watch
Jagamara Japiljari elders
ready for corroboree
Small groups sit cross-legged on the ground
besmeared in age-old patterns
Colours chiselled from the land
Gurramurra guttural words like idling two strokes
then like crickets
mating birds
Strong pauses pass in waves
A wailing voice discharges from the darkness
dissects the smoky air
Head man answers in baptismal chant
Cacophony erupts as ritualists sing and dance
in cataleptic ecstasy
The boys come in
Green mulga torn from trees and laid in fires
incites symbolic smoke that blankets glistening bodies –
valued as fatigues of woven gold
The men pick up the blazing timbers
Trance protects them from the pain
In single file backwards
they incant
and stamp through red hot embers
beating burning branches on the ground
All through the night
beneath the stars of mother country
leaders coach the boys
and celebrate the tenure of the land
that one more group is vested in the knowledge of tradition
language
bush food
water
care of country
One more night in mothers’ huts
before they take a wife
the boys
Bigwig blackfella Jakamarra
there all night
as proud as any of his smoky ochred skin
You can’t stand in his gunyah – long and rounded structure
built of bits of iron
canvas
leafy tree limbs
saplings as support
pot-holey floor from lazy yellow dogs
And in a corner hangs a white shirt on a branch
at ready for his frequent flights
to parliament
I remember the comments from one of the judges about my poem. Mostly accolades that made me proud, but there was a ‘but’. He said he didn’t like how I shattered his reverie in the final three lines. But this was exactly what I meant to do – to make the comparison between the age-old traditional way of life and how these people have, in many ways, been brought into modern times. And also to bring to notice that there are those now who are educated and qualified enough to fight for a future into which they can bring all that is so deeply and spiritually embedded in their timeless past.
My memoir ‘So Big The Land’ is a sharing of this two year epic journey of forty thousand miles, the amazing Australian landscape, its people, its remote and desolate places, its sheep and cattle stations and their people. So is it a story of love and loss, danger and courage, tragedy and overcoming. For the Barossa people the paperback is available from Hive Barossa Cafe. Elsewhere on line from about twenty booksellers around the world. Other than at Hive Cafe, it is usually cheapest from Amazon and is also available on Kindle.
Warmly,
Sue