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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780702244681 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2011 |
| Series: | UQP Black Australian Writers |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 136 |
| File size: | 467 KB |
| Age Range: | 9 Years |
Read an Excerpt
Yumba Days
By Herb Wharton
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 1994 Herb WhartonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-4471-1
CHAPTER 1
THE YUMBA
ONE DAY AFTER ALMOST A LIFETIME of wandering, perhaps in search of something missing from my life, I returned to the Yumba site on the outskirts of Cunnamulla. How times had changed. I became deeply moved by the silence of the place beside the cedar tree where our humpy once stood. Now, gum trees and willows were growing where tents or humpies housed the people that were so important to my past, that helped shape who I am today. Sitting there alone recalling much of what went before, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with an ache in my heart, visualising scenes from that past, recalling the sounds of voices of people long dead ...
Here was part of my people's history, as well as my own childhood. The now-dead cedar tree that grew with me — planted by my parents — stood as a symbol of our history of deprivation, segregation and inequalities brought about by ignorance (call it what you may). Yet even the darkest days were always somehow overcome by hope, combined with the greatest gift of all against oppression — laughter. And education — that was my key to equality, justice, and deciding my own destiny. These things also gave me identity and strength. For if we had cried they would have been tears of blood that flooded the Warrego River.
* * *
As I grew up so did the Yumba. The local council erected more and more houses made out of used timber, and communal water taps were put in more places. Later there was the communal septic toilet, which was over a hundred yards away, convenient for those clustered around it. There were still no streets, just dirt paths leading everywhere. It took me years to find out that our address was Bourke Road, Cunnamulla. We had no house numbers and no postman, and when I came to write my first letters, replies were addressed c/o Post Office. When I asked about what address to use, the older Murries replied: "Who's gonna write to you, boy? Just put 'The Yumba, Cunnamulla' — we all know where it is."
Our house was a two-roomed shack made out of scraps of corrugated iron and bush timber, and a few cut boards, mostly pine, for the front wall. It had a tin roof and a dirt floor. Here all us kids lived together with Mum and Dad when we were small. There was a big bough-shed made of saplings and bushes to one side. Pine slabs divided the two big rooms and it had a half-enclosed veranda.
At the back of the house two square openings acted as windows. Above each window was a sheet of tin nailed only at the top, which hung down as a covering. To open the window you simply propped it up with a sapling and quickly closed it again when it rained or when there was a dust-storm coming from the west. Maybe we invented roller windows long before they used roller doors!
There was no running water; we used a communal tap a fair way from the humpy. Mum had to carry our dirty clothes over to the water tap, then slave over our big, galvanised tub that was used indoors as our bathtub. I recall one Christmas that big tub was used to make raspberry cordial because we couldn't afford to buy soft drink. When everything was washed and rinsed she would carry them wet clothes home and hang them out to dry on our front yard fence.
We used an old-fashioned pit toilet about fifty yards away. There was, of course, no electricity in the Yumba. When our old kerosene lamp was out of commission, we'd make our own from a small treacle tin filled with animal fat and with a strip of felt cut from a discarded hat as a wick. These were the days before television and computers. Yet I can honestly say that during our childhood in the Yumba we were never, never bored.
Dad was always making things for us kids. Music was something most people in the Yumba enjoyed. I was never musically-minded yet loved country and western ballads. A few families owned a windup gramophone between them and lots of scratchy 78 records. A few others had big old valve radios that were sometimes harder to listen to than them scratchy records.
Reception was bad at times. Outside the house were these high poles with aerial wire stretching between them, then another running down to the radio. When turned up loud it created mostly lots of harsh crackling static and buzzing sounds.
From a few unlighted houses would come the sound of not very well tuned guitars as would-be artists strummed, sometimes accompanied by mouth organ or piano accordion, to the beat of click-clacking spoons, sticks, or bones and the clear vibrating, piercing sound of gumleaf players. All this mingled with the night sounds of the Yumba, barking dogs or a mother's long "coo-ee" or "yhu-ay", calling kids home.
The musical sounds and songs were improvised to suit the times. So were the instruments. I once owned this unique musical instrument that Dad made for me. I still can't determine if this gadget was supposed to be a guitar or ukulele. It was created from this one gallon oil tin, a round piece cut out of one side, another hole cut in the top and bottom of the tin. A solid, flat piece of wood was placed through the holes, the ends sealed with thick roofing tar, then three strands of finest wire were used, sometimes broken guitar strings.
It was only about a quarter of the size of a regular guitar and for hours I am sure I annoyed the neighbours with some unusual, un-musical sounds. That "gitar", as we called it, did provide some food for thought and for a while I had visions of standing in front of microphones howling out the latest country music hit from some southern radio station.
* * *
Our place was always clean — not so much us boys. Mum always said it only cost a bit of soap and water to be clean. I dreaded getting ready for school, especially on Monday mornings after running wild all weekend. "I'm ready," I would proudly announce to Mum. "Come here," she would always say. "Look at your hair, it's not combed properly!" Then she would use this big steel comb, trying to rake the knots from my thick curly hair. Next, inspecting my skinny bare legs that I'd been told to scrub under the tap, she would have me standing in a tub of water with a bar of soap. Seizing some old mattress fibre she would scrub my legs, telling me of the virtues of cleanliness and wondering what others would think if I arrived at school looking like something that had been rolling around in dirt and ashes all weekend.
Whimpering, I would submit, complaining that she would make me late. But was I really so eager to return to school after my glorious weekend of freedom with my mates?
CHAPTER 2THE BIGGEST PLAYGROUND IN THE WORLD
US KIDS HAD THE BIGGEST and best playground in the world, with great mates as well as enemies you could fight and talk with. The town was a kilometre north of the Yumba, hidden from view by the large white painted cemetery fence and the big red hopbush sandhill. To the south, between the sandhill and the river, was a flat expanse of coolabah flood plain. On its western side was the Warrego River. That sandhill marked the boundary of our front yard, and the river was our backyard.
We were very aware of the landscape around us, and of the Aboriginal beliefs we learned. Us kids were always learning something new from our elders, and we used the tracking skills they taught us along the dusty roads of the town as well as through the bush.
One of my mates was Jimmy Dardo, a big, friendly, easy-going boy. It seemed as if nothing could make him angry. He was something of a hero, for when we played rugby league Jimmy was the best goal kicker of all of us. He would place the ball, and I would watch, fascinated, as he raced or lumbered forward barefooted, his huge feet with the little toe of the right foot sticking straight out sideways as he kicked yet another goal.
Another mate was John, a white kid with short, straight hair. He was very talkative and argumentative — and he was the one I swapped my johnnycake with for egg and tomato sandwiches. Like me, John later became an author, and among his literary works is the biography of Gough Whit-lam, one of Australia's greatest Prime Ministers. I wonder what the odds were in them far-off days that two of us kids from that dusty outback playground would grow up to have our books published.
My best mate, Gundi, was a white kid who lived on the edge of town and spent more time with us Murries than with his own people. To me, he was one of us. His mother worked in the town as a cleaning woman. She was thin and wiry and had an acid tongue. They lived in this old, dilapidated wooden house with four big, high-ceilinged rooms. It was the only white house I ever entered in town, urged on by Gundi, when no one was home.
The house was more sparsely furnished than our tin humpy. I recall only an old table and a couple of rickety chairs in the living room, with drab wooden walls. But it did have tap water indoors, a septic toilet and electric light. Yet when the lights were turned on, this only highlighted the drabness of those empty, brooding rooms.
Gundi and me helped to damage that sparse furniture once, after we had seen the movie Tarzan, King of the jungle, instead of our usual cowboy movies. We spent hours swinging from the inside rafters of the roof, yelling wild jungle calls and sometimes landing on the wobbly chairs or table. One day when we were re-enacting movie scenes we broke the chair legs and were caught red-handed by Gundi's mother. After that Gundi was forbidden to bring anyone home unless his mum was there.
I never visited his house again, but we used to meet on the sandhill to hunt and play, unconfined by walls, our imaginations unlimited. Gundi was a great thinker, but he wasn't very good at arithmetic. "What's six and six, Gundi?" someone asked him one day. Gundi thought for a while, rubbing and scratching his head and mumbling to himself, then he clasped each finger one after the other, and finally, with a lopsided smile he proclaimed loudly while half-raising his right hand as if answering the teacher: "I know, I know! That's what ya get from the headmaster when ya been real bad."
Six cuts of the cane on each hand, that was my mate Gundi's answer. A real diplomat, he always sought enlightened answers for everything.
Gundi fitted the following description — taller and a few years older than me, of tubby build, straight mousey hair, blue eyes, deeply suntanned. Sometimes there might be arguments out on the sandhill because he wasn't a Murri. "Yes, he is a Murri," I would say. "If he wants to be Murri he can be. He's our mate."
Although Gundi hated arguments or fights himself, he would sometimes encourage others to settle disputes with their fists. But if he was challenged he would protest loudly, "I can't fight! I've got this rare disease — one punch could kill me, mate. And I've got this crook heart — one hit and I'd be done for. Let's play noughts and crosses or marbles instead. I can't ever fight, true mate, real true."
We often abused Gundi verbally but we never fought him. In fact sometimes we would fight his battles for him, and then he would be our noisiest supporter, urging us on. "Give him an upper cut or straight left, mate!" he'd yell, while he shadow-boxed around in the background, throwing punches at the wind. Then, after the fight was over he'd tell you how to do better next time. That was my mate Gundi.
* * *
Horses and cattle grazed in this unfenced playground of ours — both destined to become an important part of my later life as a stockman, rodeo rider and drover, occupations which in turn would lead me to become a writer. For I have always chosen to write about the things I know best.
Us kids were certainly influenced by the cowboy movies we went to see uptown. We would jump on horses we did not own, and sometimes tumble off them again as we tried to ride them bareback. And we loved to play cowboys and Indians on that big hopbush hill, fashioning bows from the supplejack tree and arrows from the hopbush. Covered in dust and ashes, clad in our oldest shorts and no shirts we roamed the hill eating the sweet mistletoe from the wilga tree or the ripe bumbles (wild oranges).
One day as our small gang roamed the hill, we watched from amid the hopbush as a band of white kids approached across the open ground. In the lead was a kid we had never seen before, twice our size and twice as big as those who followed him. He was wearing clean pressed clothes with socks and shoes. Watching from our thick cover, this kid reminded me of a story I had heard of Moses leading his followers into the wilderness.
Spreading out, we set a trap for this Moses and his band. It was an encounter I shall never forget. When we poked our dishevelled heads of hair out of the green hopbushes, that big kid stopped as if he'd been frozen to the spot, while the others turned and fled.
Silently we stared at Moses, who stood there transfixed, mouth agape. After a minute he screamed at the top of his voice, "My God! Wild Blacks!" Then, he too turned and fled. But he was handicapped by his cumbersome shoes on that heavy, loose sand, and was easily chased after and brought crashing down with a rugby league tackle we had learned at school a few weeks before.
Soon we were gathered around that big kid, now whimpering on the ground. We stood silently, holding our bows and arrows. The kid made no attempt to get up, but knelt upon the sand, praying: "Please God, save me from these unholy Blacks!" Imagine the effect this had on us kids from the Yumba. It was music to our ears and we went into a frenzy, dancing and chanting around him, yabbering away in devilish delight. We relapsed into English when we stopped dancing and held a pow-wow about what we were gonna do with this fella trespassing on our land.
"We could ransom him," Jimbo suggested. "Might get the price of the pictures for him. We only need ten bob for all five of us." But then we realised that none of us would dare deliver a ransom note. No picture for us tonight, no ice-cream and pies.
Hearing this, Moses seemed to calm down.
"Let's tie him to a stake," Gundi said, licking his lips.
Even though Moses was kneeling, he was still as tall as us small kids standing up. He could perhaps have given us all backhanders and sent us flying arse over head into the sand. Reaching out, I ran my hand over his thick round shoulder. "Gee, he's fat, let's eat the paleface!" I declared. That's when Moses became a blubbering idiot. Never before or since has anyone prayed like that big kid. We heaped up some dry hopbush then set it alight and flames two metres high soon leapt into the sky. I'm sure that kid had dirty trousers by this time.
But finally we decided to release him. Unlike them poor Indians in the pictures, we had triumphed over the enemy then shown him mercy. He blessed himself then took off sobbing through the hopbush and the last we saw of him he was out on the plain, racing madly for the safety of the town as if he had a Dibble-Dibble on his tail.
Oh, how I'd like to meet that man today. I'd take him out to dinner and put fish upon his plate. I'm sure he would remember well the day when he was on the menu near a town called Cunnamulla, when he dared set foot upon our land.
Perhaps the fight for land rights began then, for all us Murri kids were convinced we owned that big red hopbush hill. He had taken us for wild people-eating pagans, and we were not about to enlighten him. Yet come Monday morning we would be back in school, learning more of his whitefella history, while he and most others like him ignored true Australian history.
* * *
I sometimes shudder at the antics we got up to, wandering that sandhill, and how adventure could quite easily have turned into tragedy. Like the time we came across this big red bull standing there, every now and then rubbing its long horns against the hopbush.
"Hey! He's sharpening his horns, gonna charge us!" Gundi shouted.
"Ar, he can't catch us, mate," cousin Jack said. We all knew we could outrun the horse ridden by the dairyman who also owned this bull. Sometimes, feeling thirsty, we would bail up his quietest cows and milk them. A couple of times the dairy owner caught us and came galloping after us on his chestnut pony. Off we went barefooted, dodging and weaving through the thick hopbush. The horse would labour hock-deep in the heavy, loose sand while the dairyman, with his stockwhip cracking and cursing loudly, soon gave up the chase.
Now, as the bull stood rubbing his head among the hopbush, we decided it was indeed sharpening its horns to charge us. We watched, fascinated, and after about ten minutes decided that the bull had changed its mind. "He's not gonna charge," we decided, disappointed. Keeping a safe distance away, yelling and waving bushes, it seemed that nothing we could do would make that bull charge. "Ya gotta have something red to wave," someone declared. But we were wearing only our tattered khaki shorts. Gundi informed us that the only way that bull would charge was to start a fire. Somehow he convinced us that bulls would charge the flames of a fire, even though we knew flames were yellow, not red.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Yumba Days by Herb Wharton. Copyright © 1994 Herb Wharton. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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