8
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Daddypaddy
Robin Hardiman
My daddy Paddy fancied himself a wrestler although he was a stockman really.
He worked on stations all across the Territory from 1929 I think it was, right up
until the day he died which was here at Wangkili where I was born and which is
once again my home. Now having been lost to it once before as I shall relate, I
trust you’ll understand how reluctant I am to countenance the loss of it again.
God knows what Wangkili was like back then. It was just his, his cattle, goats,
chooks and cats, the lean-to, Paddy’s mob, their mob of dogs and women, oh and
yes, my mother. Not that I ever knew her. I knew about her, indeed I did for all the
Nungarrayis told me but I cannot recall it now. There’s simply not a lot that I
remember because daddy Paddy made damn sure that I was kept apart. And you
can be sure I used to damn daddy Paddy for that separation but not any more. I
know he was a cruel article, terrible in drink, I know he boasted of the men he’d
killed making of himself a murderer but I cannot curse him any more.
Strange to tell it’s love I feel for daddy Paddy now. He was loved by those men
who gave their sweat and blood for him and mostly willingly, it was their work
after all made Wangkili what it was. He was loved by enough of their women too
although never enough of them for him.
I could weep for Paddy’s mob for just as he believed he owned them like he
owned a pick or shovel so they believed that he belonged to them. Oh yes.
I remember how they grieved for him. Why, even that man that murdered him
broke down and wept at the trial. He was my father and my friend, he sobbed and
most affecting it must have been for the jury seemed to succumb to it. He only did
five years then he was out again and telling everyone that he would marry. Me.
When I was six I discovered I’d been happy. When I was six a woman strange
to me appeared at Wangkili, Aunt Kathleen my daddy Paddy said she was and
claimed she was his sister. She said she was my mother. Marm. Truth is I do not
know that she was either. Marm took me away from my loving Nungarrayis and
from Wangkili and daddy Paddy too. She took me to a flat half-flattened town
which now I know was Darwin. She said I was her daughter that was born of her
rape which occurred before the war when she was visiting her brother Patrick
Hanrahan of Wangkili Station. She said the man that ravished her was known as
Picket and I’ll tell more of him.
How long we stayed in that hot flat place I do not know but when we left there
I left recorded as Kathleen Hanrahan’s natural daughter by father unknown and
that is who I was when I arrived in Ireland. For eight years, that is who I remained.
Crossing the ocean again at age fifteen, a voyage this time north to south, brought
back few memories of my first time over water.
Of my destination I was ignorant, something to do with Adelaide. I prayed in
the name of Jesus, who is Adelaide, is it Adelaide that’s meeting me or what, but
Arafura Short Story Award
9
no answer came. And soon I was so seasick that it frightened the prayers right out
of my head.
I stood on the wharf of Adelaide with a suitcase either side. The sky was blue
and the sea was grey and seagulls shrieked bloody murder. My brain was just as
empty as a shell echoing distant waves until it was penetrated by a strange new
word spoken in a man’s soft voice saying Nambin, Nambin, Nambin. I couldn’t
move my head just looked sideways with my eyes. A tall skinny black man in
dirty clothes and a dirty big hat and nothing on his feet at all and all I could tell of
his face were his eyes as my eyes swivelled away. For the love of God, who or
what was Nambin?
Daddy Paddy waitin’ ay?
Memory transfixed me like electrocution. Daddy Paddy! Tears sprang to my
eyes and I could do nothing to prevent them. I hung my head that he would not see
my weakness and I picked up my portmanteaus that he did not deign to touch the
lazy devil.
His name he said was Picket. The only other words he spoke to me were, We go
Wangkili ay? He indicated the direction of our journey with a movement of his
lips. The travelling took a week.
Wangkili.
Well, Wangkili never was much of a place for conversation. You know, one day
to stimulate some reminiscence I said to daddy Paddy, Is it another potato famine
then that you’re able to emigrate a servant out from Ireland?
Can’t grow potatoes here you brainless get, he said.
So that was it. That’s what I’d become. Daddy Paddy’s stupid servant.
Housekeeper, washerwoman, cook. The lot. Well, not the lot like in the dream I
became the lot but anyway that dream came later.
Picket came often to talk with daddy for Picket was daddy’s Number One.
Then there was daddy’s bedroom where I could tell from clothing left behind that
some of the women had spent the night in there. Neither his visitors nor their castoff clothes were ever mentioned. I certainly forebore to mention them.
Soon I came to understand that those debauches were almost always followed
by terrible scenes among daddy’s boys. Paddy himself would be drunk for days
and take to one or two of them with the stockwhip. Often enough the blackfella
camp would be empty the next day and Paddy would fetch his saddle and go off
with some tucker to ride around the bores. Then for a few days decency might
reign. Soon enough the mob would come home and it was peace and prosperity
again.
Seven good years we had, oh with their assorted ups and downs but compared
to what came later they were good enough. The house was my domain and I took
pride in it. Once a year more or less daddy Paddy entertained a campdraft here at
Wangkili Station and all the rooms and all the sheds were filled with swags and
friends and loud with their hilarity.
10
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Slowly I got to know our neighbour, though only twice in seven years as I
recall did I ever pay a visit. You see, I could not trust myself to speak for fear of
the bitterness and confusion that filled me up, for fear of the terrible words that
were ready to spill out of me, foul words that stained the air when my temper
slipped its restraint. Temper made me spit and scratch and leave the furrows of my
fingernails down daddy Paddy’s face. I would have raked his eyes out had he been
weaker and I stronger and cooked them too and served them up to him or thrown
them to the dogs and laughed to see them eaten.
Until I recollected how I loved him.
So you’ll be wondering how it was that Picket murdered him. You see, what
daddy Paddy liked to do was wrestle Picket to the ground, showing off his skill,
wrestle for a bet which he always won, the prize being Picket’s woman. There
never was any kind of prize should the black man win because of course he never
did. Wasn’t meant to, was he? Well, not until that last time. And you’d have to say
it was an accident for that Picket had a heart of gold. It was prison I believe that
ruined him.
Young Picket was a wily man and although he lost to Paddy every time, he
picked up a thing or two in all those years of wrestling with the boss. Now there’s
another thing. No one ever called daddy Paddy “boss”, the mob just called him
daddypaddy like it was the word for boss in their language. It seemed somehow to
fit the rhythm of their tongue.
Ah but you’ll be wanting me to get back to the old man’s murder.
Well, he was bellowing like a bull and puffing like a grampus and red in the
face, he’d put on weight you know, and Picket was circling and watching him
with those beady blackcurrant eyes of his when he sort of launched himself at
Picket and -it was funny to watch. Everyone burst out laughing. Picket made a
kind of feint, just bent down low and daddy Paddy went sailing right over the top
of him and landed on his head and that was it. Finish. No more wrestling. It took
us a moment to realise what had happened. Daddy Paddy had a broken neck.
I won’t go into how we got him inside and laid him flat and all the rest of it but
he knew a broken neck could finish him. I didn’t let him forget it either. Picket
must have known it too. I caught him right in the act when I came into the room
with the old man’s gruel, not proper gruel like at home but rice boiled up with a
mess of vegetable and old cracked marrow bones. Well, as I say, there was Picket
with the old man’s head twisting it, wrenching it from side to side, you could hear
the crunch, and as soon as he saw me he bolted and left me there to-to cope.
When it came to court, he claimed he was only kissing him, raising his head up
to kiss him on the forehead, like forgiving him. I said at the time it looked more
like killing than kissing to me and the judge was so good to me, so kind in making
that lawyer feller give over and stop accusing me. I was after all his daughter and
only a witness to his murder, it was not right that some lawyer treated me as if I
had done that heinous deed. It was Picket, of course it was Picket and if it was
only manslaughter then that was the jury’s prerogative to decide.
Arafura Short Story Award
11
A lot of time elapsed between the death and Picket’s trial. Our neighbour, young
Mr Canavan, came over regular from Drumcondra to see if all was in order here at
Wangkili and glad I was of his consideration too. Then there were the legalities,
Paddy’s will for one. As his daughter and only offspring, the inheritance passed to
me but if you think the trial was slow in happening, the business of the will was
worse. I began more frequent visits to Drumcondra and at Wangkili I got to know
the Nungarrayis at last.
How my head would spin as they explained who must marry who and who was
mother and father or cousin-brother or poison cousin if you do not mind, all those
bewildering ramifications. I was deeply touched by their concern, these sisters of
my true mother who considered themselves mothers to me by the terms of their
native law. I was Nambin to them and they all were Nungarrayi to me and soon I
grew used to the strangeness and did not notice any longer.
When the trial was done, Paddy’s insurance money came. After long discussions
with solicitors and even longer discussions with Colin Canavan and the longest
document that ever I’ve had to read and digest, Colin assumed the responsibilities
of manager at Wangkili Station and became my business partner. For the second
time in my life I set sail for Ireland. It was 1964 and I was twenty-five years old.
I thought and felt like an old woman.
I think perhaps I may never have returned to Wangkili but for that telephone
call which came from Colin and changed everything. He said it was all across the
country, tongues were wagging everywhere.
Picket was about to marry daddy Paddy’s daughter.
When I returned scarce a black face remained on Wangkili. No employer would
pay them, not equal wages with a white man. Paddy’s mob was gone. A married
couple was employed to run the place. It was coming up to Christmas, 1971. I was
in no mood for celebrations. I had to find Picket.
I felt sorry for him when I saw him, gap-toothed and made obsequious by the
grog.
So you’re thinking you’ll be marrying me, I said to him and he pretended not to
understand. Marrying daddy Paddy’s daughter is it? I kept on at him and he looked
particularly foolish. So what’s her name I said and he said Nambin. Which
Nungarrayi is her mother I said, and he mumbled Can’t say it, passed away. Do I
know her, I bore in on him, and he shook his head.
Bring her to the house I ordered and pushed a dollar on him and I drove away
headed for Drumcondra.
It is difficult to be certain given the passage of time but I believe that night was
the first night I experienced the dream of daddy Paddy’s interfering. The dream is
very contradictory and confusing. When it happens I awake in mortal terror for in
the dream I am no child but a woman formed and in some state of ecstasy like I’m
receiving God himself but it’s not the spasm, the divinity that wakes me, it is the
murder of my daddy Paddy and it’s not that other man that murders him but me.
12
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Just as my life began to take that shape I trusted would fulfil me came the visitation
of these hideous dreams.
I never was visited by that Nambin. I saw Picket maybe once or twice but I
don’t believe we ever spoke again. I did not immediately return to Wangkili for
Colin was mustering and I felt that I could be more useful to him staying at
Drumcondra. Then later in that first year of my return Colin began a major
undertaking. An area of low-lying ground just a couple of miles from the homestead
was slowly being transformed into a permanent wetlands which required huge
pieces of machinery to move the earth about. I learned to operate his backhoe.
Indeed I did. I could swing that bucket like I was swatting flies. I’m proud of my
accomplishment and prouder still of the swales I made and gutters following the
contour lines to bring run-off water down into our chain of ponds.
Those Drumcondra Ponds today are justly celebrated.
They came at a terrible cost of course, a terrible cost to Colin for it was during
the construction of the Ponds that he suffered the accident which confined him for
the rest of his short life to that wheelchair. I stayed on to be with him because the
poor man really could not cope and an affection grew between us. The day we
married was the very last time that Picket was seen. We never heard of him alive
again. The wagging tongues had it otherwise I do not doubt for those loose lips
and wagging tongues have had their sport of me. It was not sympathy I received
on Colin’s passing either but degrading innuendo. I have never permitted an outward
show of hurt but maintained always an appearance of indifference.
I do not doubt you will recall the incident some years ago at Drumcondra. The
gossips waxed hysterical that Picket had returned at last to point his accusing
finger. I have often wondered if they really were Picket’s bones exposed when the
Ponds were dredged. Being human bones, of course the police became involved
and when it appeared that the cause of death was a monstrous crushing blow to the
body, it became a murder investigation. It went nowhere naturally for lack of solid
evidence. Even so there was no shortage of inflammatory talk. But to tell you the
truth, it would not surprise me to see Picket lurch in drunkenly one day and ask for
some tucker or the loan of ten dollars so he might buy more beer.
There is yet another new manager at Drumcondra. The company must be
wondering if that place has some kind of hex on it, they have had such trouble
with its running since I sold up there. Despite their troubles, it makes them a
power of money. Wangkili is in a sorrier state for it has carried no stock for several
years but I do believe that with some application, the property could be made
profitable again.
I am no longer certain of my future but I have written to you of daddy Paddy
and my past that you at least might begin to understand. Do I ask for too much,
expecting understanding? Can you accept, despite all that I have written, my heart
belongs here in the dirt of Wangkili? Can you possibly believe that I leave here
with reluctance? No matter, I have grown used to disbelief.
Arafura Short Story Award
13
I have business that will take me away from here for a year and maybe more so
I have decided to negotiate with your clients, your Nungarrayis and Nambins and
what have you. You write they have expressed the wish to return here to the station,
to their country as they call it. I propose either to sell my interest in the place or to
put the lease of Wangkili up for tender. My terms I believe will surprise you.
There has always been much wild talk in these parts and now the talk is of
some form of Native Title coming through the government but whatever that may
be I believe it will be long in coming.
A simple straightforward sale has much to recommend it.
r
14
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Punching Bag
Marian Devitt
The lady I have to talk to said it would help me if I say everything I can remember
so I’m going to but I hate doing this. I think I sound funny.
On Saturday morning I help my Dad clean the pool. I ask Dad why we have to
do it all the time but he always says Just shut up and do it. I don’t know why. The
pool always just fills up with leaves again. There’s a big tree at the end of the pool
and a palm tree and it drops big branches in and some coconuts even. They sound
radical when they hit the water. They’d kill you for sure if you were in there and
they dropped on you.
I hate leaves. You can get them with the net but a lot of them sink and then
they’re too hard to get out. I reckon we should just get them out while we’re
swimming but we’re not allowed to go in much. We’re only allowed by ourselves
on Saturday afternoon. There’s always leaves already. I keep diving until I get
them. Mum gets angry if she catches me. I’ve got fungus in my ears so I’m not
supposed to put my head under water or I’ll go deaf.
Mum goes to aerobics on Saturday afternoon and dad has a sleep. He puts on
the aircon and shuts all the louvres and the door and we’re not allowed to knock or
anything. He always says don’t tell your mother. I have to look after Aden. He’s
Mum’s favourite. I hate him. Sometimes I think about drowning him because he
can’t swim properly and it might just look like a pool accident.
I held him under once but I got a fright. I dragged him out and thumped him
and he had a really bad asthma attack. I had to wake Dad up but he took a long
time answering the door. He thought I was just being disobedient. Aden was a bit
blue round the mouth but he was all right when we took him to hospital.
I don’t know why but he never said what happened. He never dobbed me but he
always whinges and cries if I come too close in the pool. Most of the time he just
sits on the steps and puts his feet in.
My Dad’s a bit fat in the stomach and so am I. I asked Dad to do some sport
with me but he’s always too tired on the weekend and we have to do the pool
anyway. Everyone says I’m just like my Dad and Aden is just like my Mum. My
Dad hates me talking if he’s hosing around the pool. He says he has to think and
he can’t think if I’m talking all the time. My Dad owns a shop that sells tyres and
car stuff. Mum says he should be at the business and not leave the staff unsupervised
but Dad’s got a heart problem and he has to rest. When he’s finished thinking he
says You can talk now but then I forget what I want to say and he says See. Wasn’t
that important was it? He says I talk too much like Mum.
When Dad’s hosing and thinking, I watch the people next door through the
fence. One of the ladies that lives there is weird. She’s got fuzzy hair and a fat
nose and does stupid jumps and kicks on the front lawn. I don’t know if she’s
exercising or dancing or what. There’s one man that visits her that’s a real Aborigine
Arafura Short Story Award
15
and he plays the didgeridoo. He’s really black. Not many ladies visit her but lots
of men do. There’s this one bald man that gives her massages on the lawn and it’s
really disgusting. I told Mum about it and she said she’s just a slut and don’t look.
Sometimes I can hear what the people there are saying if I lie down near the fence
but I don’t really understand what they mean. They talk different to Mum and
Dad.
There’s always cars coming and going at their place. Dad calls them The Ratbag
Renters. He says Ratbag Renters with all their bloody cars comin’ and goin’ all
bloody hours. Sometimes me and Aden make up stories about them and tell Dad
because he always goes off about them. It’s funny watching him. He gets really
red in the face.
One day the Aborigine came around to visit them but no one was home. He
spotted me watching him through the fence. Mum was out. I said You can come
over here. We had some chips and a Coke and then we had a swim. He kept telling
me I’m his little brother but I don’t believe him. I’m sure our family’s not Aboriginal
but I can’t ask Mum or Dad. They’ll kill me if they find out he was here. They
don’t like Aborigines much. I don’t think they know any that would visit.
Another lady that lives in that house is trying to teach herself to juggle. I got
one of her juggling balls that rolled under the fence one time. She’s always carrying
books and she gets angry with the lady with the fuzzy hair and the men visiting all
the time. I heard her talking to her husband about where they can go for work
when she’s a teacher. I saw the juggling lady’s husband do their washing and he
hangs their clothes out.
Dad won’t hang out the washing. He tells me and Aden only to do the pool and
the rubbish and those two next door probably aren’t even married anyway and
Mum should do the washing.
My Mum doesn’t do the washing much. Mum and Dad fight about it. Mum can
scream loud and so can Dad. My Mum does heaps of aerobics classes and now
she’s doing Pump. She wants to be an instructor and Dad should help because she
wants to do weight-lifting too. She said me and Dad should lose weight because
we’re too fat. Mum said Aden’s weight is perfect. Mum mostly wears gym stuff.
She’s always washing that but not our stuff. Aden and me sit in our cupboards in
our room when they’re yelling at each other. Then they don’t talk to each other for
a few days but that’s better and we just talk to them separately.
When Mum and Dad and Aden are sleeping I eat all the stuff I really like. I
really like liverwurst and mini pizzas and lasagne in the microwave. Sometimes I
get some money out of Mum’s jar and get chocolate and chips. Aden isn’t supposed
to eat chocolate because he’s got allergies. He can’t be around when you make the
bed and he gets out of doing his all the time. He’s got to have his medicine every
day or else he’ll start wheezing. Mum’s always fussing about him and he sucks up
to her and costs us lots of money and wakes everyone up at night. When I’ve
really got the shits with him I give him chocolate because I know it will make him
sick. Sometimes I hide his puffer on him and he spins out. He deserves it. I hate
16
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
the way he always copies my clothes and wears everything the same that I’m
wearing. He just does it to annoy me. He always tells if I get detention at school.
So that’s my family. I think I’m ready to tell you about The Thing now.
It was really hot I remember that. I just got home from school. Mum and Dad
weren’t home yet and Aden was at swimming class. There was really loud music
from next door, the people on the other side, not the Ratbags, but the other side of
us. They’re just normal people on that side. They work for the Public Service.
They’ve got a nice black dog and a grown up son about sixteen. The son used to
talk to me but I can’t remember his name anymore. I knew it was him because he
always plays loud music when his parents are out and I know his music. Then
their dog started howling for some reason. I thought maybe the son had gone out
and left the dog alone and left the music on and the dog was lonely or something.
Then his mum came home and the music was still going and she started
screaming and the music went off and then an ambulance came and then the police
came. They came in to see me. They asked me what I saw. They kept asking me
about the time I got home and everything but all I could think of was the punching
bag in the carport. It was swinging there and the music was loud. It’s hard to see
properly next door because there’s lots of palm trees in the way. Then I got scared.
I didn’t understand why they were asking me things and I started crying. Then
Dad came home and he shouted at the police and told me to get into the house.
The family next door moved after that. Every time I asked Dad to explain what
happened he says Forget about it, nothing happened and then he says Don’t ask
me about that again. Just forget about it. But I can’t.
I started dreaming about the punching bag, except it isn’t really a punching
bag. The first night I woke up Aden was wheezing and it woke me up from the
dream. I felt frightened and I couldn’t breathe and I thought I might have caught
asthma from Aden. I couldn’t get back to sleep but I didn’t want to shut my eyes
because I could see things in the dream and it scared me. Not everything just bits.
I want to remember it all so I can stop thinking about it. I get in trouble at school
all the time for not listening but I’m just thinking about the dream. I nearly talked
about it to the man from the Ratbags. I remember him coming home that day and
I thought maybe he knows.
I was watching him hanging out the washing a couple of weeks ago and thinking
how can I talk to him about it so I threw my tennis ball over the fence and he threw
it back over again. I did it again and he just laughed and said Now I wonder where
this mysterious ball came from and threw it back over the fence again. I think he
knew I was there. He said G’day mate at the shop later and then we walked home
a bit together and I gave him some of my chips and we talked a bit. He was nice.
Then he said How’s everything going at school and I just ran off. I hate school. I’m
in lots of trouble for not doing my homework. I don’t understand what I have to do
and Mum’s too tired to help me because Aden was sick again last night.
I like that Ratbag man next door. He talks to me. But Dad blew it really bad
with him last Friday night. I don’t think he’ll talk to me anymore now.
Arafura Short Story Award
17
Dad was playing his music downstairs and having a drink and singing and he
asked Mum if she wanted to watch Apocalypse Now again and Mum said no and
went to bed. She made us go too and it was still early. That means Dad’s going to
stay up all night. Mum always says Now you boys leave your father alone. Dad
kept drinking. He was pissed off with Mum because he put the video through the
speakers and he knows that keeps us all awake.
He loves the sound of the helicopters in the beginning of the movie. There’s
this bit where this head soldier is ordering the other soldiers, the ones under him,
to go surfing and they don’t want to but he forces them ’cause he’s the boss. Dad
loves that bit. Dad says he missed out on Vietnam. They didn’t pick him because
he’s got a health problem but he really wanted to go. He always replays the bit
where the boss says Charlie doesn’t surf! Now get in there and surf! You hear!’ It’s
something like that. Dad says the words with an American accent like the head
soldier. I don’t know Charlie’s other name but Dad said he’s the enemy.
Well ... then the man from the Ratbags came over and said Mate – it’s one
o’clock. Can you turn it down a bit? I’ve gotta go to work in four hours.
Dad went ballistic. He was screaming at him Do you own that house mate? Do
you own that fuckin’ house?
The man said No mate I don’t own the house and Dad said Well who the fuck da
ya think y’are comin in ‘ere? You got a fuckin’ nerve mate. I own my house. I own
my fuckin’ house an’ I do what I fuckin’ well want in me own home so fuck off or
I’ll blast ya fuckin’ brains out.
The man just went. I was watching from the stairs. Dad kept walking up and
down and swearing he’d shoot the bastard and then he went and got his gun and
had another drink and he tried to put the bullets in but he fell asleep and the video
finished and it was quiet.
I went down to the pool. It was too hot to sleep anyway.
There’s a light under the water for night time. I got my face mask and flippers.
I was in there for ages diving for leaves. I never get to do that. My fingers went all
white and funny. I pretended I was drowning and I floated face down with my
arms out. Then I started thinking about the punching bag and seeing everything
again and hearing everything. It was in these flashes, like watching the video from
the stairs when you can’t see everything properly. The pump sounds funny under
water ’specially if you whump your ears.
I remember the music their son was playing that afternoon but it was all mixed
up with helicopters and the ambulance siren. The pictures started flashing on the
bottom of the pool and I started to feel scared and I heard Aden wheezing and the
dog howling and the pump noise and the sound from my ears whumping. I could
see the back of Aden’s head when I held him under the water and I started to
remember when the ambulance came and the palm trees moving with the wind
and I nearly put the pictures all together. I remember nearly everything but I got
scared again.
I think I know why his mother was screaming.
18
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I floated on my back for a long time and then I got very cold. I felt very sad for
their son and scared because Dad always said they’re normal people. I got all the
leaves out. Every last one.
When the sky started to get lighter I went up to bed but I still couldn’t sleep so
I just sat in the kitchen and had some liverwurst on toast and waited. Dad was still
asleep downstairs so I went down and put his gun back and picked up the bullets
and put them away so he wouldn’t remember last night. I always do that for Dad.
I looked through the fence at the Ratbags for a while. I was going to ask that man
if I was right. But I didn’t.
The Ratbags man went to work and the lady with the fuzzy hair went off in the
car with the bald man and the juggling lady went to the market on her bike. She
always does that on Saturday morning. Mum and Aden were still asleep. I knew
they’d sleep late because of Dad last night. I decided to go to the Ratbags while
no-one was there.
I had the lady’s juggling ball in my pocket to give back to her. I wrote her a note
saying sorry about the ball but I just found it when I was sweeping around the
pool. All her books and stuff was on the table near the laundry and I had a look at
them. It was nice and cool there so I just sat for a while and looked over at our
place to see what she could see from there. For a minute I thought I could see a
punching bag in our yard but then the wind blew again and the palm trees moved
around again and it was nothing. I decided not to leave her a note. I threw it away.
I just left the ball on top of her books.
Then I went over to the house on the other side, the one where the screaming
was. It’s been For Sale for a while. Mum says no one will buy it after what happened.
The punching bag is still hanging in the carport. It’s got mould all over it. I
pushed it. It’s really heavy. I pushed it as hard as I could. It just moved a little bit.
Just a tiny little bit so I don’t see how the wind would make it swing. There’s no
way it would swing unless someone was really hitting it.
I never heard him hit that punching bag. I would have heard that even with the
music going. I know that sound. I’m pretty sure what I saw now. I know it wasn’t
the punching bag and I think I’ve talked about it enough now.
r
Arafura Short Story Award
19
The Freedom Dress
Marian Devitt
I remember Margarita’s red dress, hanging on the clothes line. She used to peg
it lightly inside the straps, so the pegs didn’t mark. It was a linen dress, with flecks
of black throughout the red. The neckline was square and showed off Margarita’s
collarbones, but despite the charms of the dress, it didn’t hide the fact that Margarita
was a dour looking woman.
This dress ... this my running away dress, she told me when I complimented her
on it. My freedom dress.
One of the first things I noticed about Margarita was that she had very few
clothes. She wore cotton shorts and tee-shirts during the day and a plain, dimpled
house coat at night, an oddly feminine garment for such a severe woman to wear.
She obviously had enough underwear to last the week, two days of wear from
each pair of shorts, a tee-shirt a day, then the Saturday wash and the cycle would
begin again.
The day I complimented her on the red dress she also decided to tell me why it
was she decided to stop using her married name and resume her maiden name,
Rodriguez. She told me she was originally from Chile. When I asked if she was
ever homesick she said there was no reason to be homesick and no reason to go
back there, but I remember a linguist told me once that retaining a strong accent
was related to homesickness or a sense of not being able to settle in the new
country. Margarita said she’d run away from Chile over twenty years ago and left
her Australian husband, Mr McMurtrie, a good six months ago.
We work at the school ... in the desert. People say ... how you can work there ...
but I like this desert. One day ... Father Benedict is going to the town. He say ...
You want to come Margarita? and I think ... why not. I should see this town. My
husband not like me to see this town. He not like me to go away from his sight. I
am tired of this ... obsession. His control. So. I change my clothes. I put my red
dress. I take my purse. Father give me our wages. I put the money in my purse but
I think, no, I don’t want that man to say I steal from him. So I leave his money on
the bed. I walk out the door. I don’t know I will do what I do. Something ... how you
say ... snap? When we get to town ... Father leave me waiting in the truck. He go
to the bank. There is a McCafferty bus. I go to the bus and I ask where he’s going.
North, he say. How much? I ask. I have enough. I buy the ticket. That’s how I’m
coming here. I not live with McMurtrie so I not use that name anymore.
The days pass slowly here. The little boarding house I manage is the last of its
kind in a city obsessed with development. All the old tropical houses are almost
gone. We don’t have air conditioners here. That keeps the guests away in the
Build Up and Wet Season, so I’m always glad to have regular tenants, although
there are never many of them. Even backpackers won’t stay here in this heat without
air-conditioning.
20
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I never dreamed I would end up running a boarding house in the tropics but the
manager’s flat is free and there’s a modest wage I can just live on. The boarding
house is on the edge of town, so I don’t really need a car. It’s a job I can do without
thinking too hard. I direct guests to their rooms and the limited attractions of the
town. I change coins for the phone and call cabs to the airport and when the guests
go I wipe the rooms clean of them and wait for the next contingent. The interstate
owners leave me to do things my way and in the late afternoon and evenings I can
write.
Then Margarita arrived. At first I thought she was just a traveller, with her tiny
bag and her ferocious itinerary of sight-seeing that consumed a whole week. A
week that turned into a month. I remember thinking There is nothing left to see.
What can she be doing every day?
I was surprised when she said she wanted to stay for a few months. I suppose
the boarding house has its charms in a run down tropical way, but the single
women’s section reminds me of a fifties boarding school. I worried how she would
tolerate the constant turnover of guests.
It soon became obvious that Margarita was not a tolerant woman. She did not
tolerate the sharing of anything much. As soon as she saved some money from her
morning cleaning job, she bought a small fridge for her room and a small television
and that was it. You hardly ever saw her, except for her rather violent way of
washing her clothes on Saturdays. She never mixed with anyone, never rang anyone,
never, as far as I know, received any mail.
She eventually applied for the better paid afternoon shift and then I saw even
less of her. Her shift started at five in the afternoon and finished around ten at
night. Five days a week. When she wasn’t working at the office block, she was
usually sleeping or just sitting in her room. Sometimes she went out and came
back in again with a small bag of shopping. Just a few things, but hardly anything
that seemed like real food. I could never work out where she ate. She hardly ever
used the kitchen here. I never knew where she went on her days off.
I went into her room once. She did say
Please don’t clean my room. I clean my room. You have plenty to clean.
So do you, I laughed. I don’t mind.
No. Please. Don’t clean my room. I clean my room thank you.
There was no one else in the place when I went in there. I don’t even understand
why I did it.
The force field of her privacy was so strong, the hairs stood up on my arm. I
didn’t dare touch a thing. It felt like I had walked into some kind of booby trap.
There was nothing obvious to tell me who she was, or what she liked, or what she
might do in her room except watch television, although there wasn’t even a program
to be seen. The bed was made with military tautness. Her terry towelling scuffs
were under a chair, hardly soiled, with just the slightest imprint of her toes. She
had bought a bedside lamp.
Arafura Short Story Award
21
She’d left the fan was on low. It stirred the hot, damp air. I thought about turning
it off, but then she would have known I’d been in her room. I knew she would feel
I had been there and want to know why. She would know the quality of air was
different. I felt so guilty I avoided her, which wasn’t hard, until she came to pay
her rent. She didn’t seem to be harbouring any malice when she paid it, so I relaxed.
After eight months the cleaning company gave Margarita an award. Cleaner of
the Month. She bought home a framed photo of herself the company had organised
as a prize. She seemed so proud of it, which didn’t seem like her somehow. She
said she was going to put it in her room. I found a little lace doily. I said Here ...
this will look nice under it. After that she seemed to treat me a little differently, as
though we had become better friends, or were somehow closer than before.
Margarita never mentioned children. She never spoke of family or friends and
once she had blotted out her husband’s name from the guest register, she never
spoke of him again either, but when my friend Estelle turned up with her three,
rampaging children, Margarita surprised me again. She made such a fuss of the
kids. They always knew there was something for them in Margarita’s room ... a
lolly or a biscuit. Margarita’s attention to the children made it easier for Estelle
and I to talk. She was very tender with them and they didn’t seem to find her hard
or strange or frightening. It was only me that did, I think and that had something to
do with my suspicion that some hard, crystalline thing I perceived in Margarita,
would be my fate too, if I wasn’t careful. I don’t really understand what I mean by
that. It’s possibly something that exists in all of us ... something obsidian and dark
and impenetrable. The children, of course, found a different centre in her.
It took me a while to work out what had happened when Margarita went missing.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for a couple of incidents at the office
block that made her very angry.
A female office worker complained that a valuable pen set was missing from
her desk. The afternoon it went missing, was Margarita’s shift. The woman made
such a fuss, the police were called in. They even came to the boarding house to
check her room. I found out later that this was at Margarita’s insistence, but it was
as though the incursion of people from the outside world into her room ruptured
that private cocoon she had spun for herself. She said she was insulted by the
accusations. The police seemed almost embarrassed. Besides, her spartan room
proved nothing.
After that, Margarita spent even less time around the place. When she wasn’t
sleeping or at work she was out walking. I couldn’t understand how she could
walk so much in the incredible, stifling heat that pulsed off the streets.
I did notice, not long after this incident, that she had bought a small, expensive
mobile phone. I saw her once, sitting on a bench outside the big supermarket in
town. I watched her dialling numbers and listening. Ending the call. Never speaking.
There were never any bills for the phone in the letter-box.
22
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Then something else happened at the office block. She told me about another
accusation of theft, although this time, no one came to check her room. She almost
cried telling me about it. Accused! The best cleaner in the place!
When she came to pay her rent a few days later she said,
I leaving on Wednesday.
Leaving? Leaving for where? Where are you going?
I don’t know how to explain the importance of Margarita’s difficult, impersonal
presence ... it had become somehow essential to me ... some strange stability in
this place of impermanence or some private conviction I had that she needed to
belong somewhere. With the weather so hot again and so few guests, I felt I needed
someone else around. Someone familiar.
Why are you leaving? Where are you going?
I go back to Father Benedict. He need me. No one work for him. No one stay
out there. Her normally thick accent was even thicker now with emotion.
Then of course ... if the school needs you ... that’s great ... but ... I’ll miss you
Margarita. I meant it. Margarita looked shocked.
I stammered, I know ... I’ve never asked you before ... I won’t mind if you say
no... but come to dinner? Have a meal with me?
Margarita looked at me, a distant hollow look that I could not fathom.
Thank you. I cannot. I am busy. I pack my bag.
Of course, I said, of course ... but if you change your mind ... any night ... just
knock.
I didn’t see her again after this conversation, except for one moment when the
bus drove past the Cathedral late the following afternoon ... it was almost dusk.
She was wearing her red dress. It was impossible to tell before the bus sped on if
she was going in or out of the Cathedral, or just standing outside.
It took me a while to work out the reason for the quick prickle of unease that
washed over me. She had told me she would finish work the following Tuesday ...
and this was only Thursday ... she should have been at work. She said herself, she
would be at work. Why was she walking past the Cathedral?
Her tiny suitcase lay on the bed. It held three bras, six pairs of underpants, the
house coat, three pairs of shorts and seven tee-shirts. All that was missing was a
set of underwear, the red dress and her slip on sandals. The disposable terry
towelling scuffs were upended in the wastebasket like abandoned feet. Her photo
was packed in amongst the soft folds of her tee-shirts. The strange thing was, the
little lace doily I’d given her didn’t seem to be in the room or in the bag. Her
mobile phone lay on the bed. I checked it for recorded calls or numbers. Nothing.
It was Wednesday now, the day of her planned leaving. I hadn’t seen her for six
days. The suitcase was still in the room. I knew I had to interfere, despite her
ferocious privacy.
The hospital, at least, could tell me she wasn’t there ... under either name ... but
the bus company wouldn’t say whether she’d bought a ticket or not. For privacy
reasons. The police were reluctant to start a Missing Person’s file because of the
Arafura Short Story Award
23
paperwork and because I just didn’t seem sure enough. It was hard to convince
them that someone who was leaving anyway was missing. The cleaning company
said she’d resigned three weeks before, just after the last accusation.
Eventually I thought of my own guest register and the address she had given
when she first signed in. I checked the number of the school in the directory and
rang. A man with a familiar, thick accent answered.
No ... Margarita wasn’t back at the school, Father Benedict said. He had never
rung her, although they would have taken her back, of course. She was a good
worker. Her husband had long gone ... at first in search of her, but as far as the
Father knew, Mr. McMurtrie had never found her. They had never heard from her.
She had never rung. The last time he had seen her, was the day he left her waiting
in the truck, outside the bank. I gave him my phone number, just in case she
turned up. So I could send on her things.
I had to be persistent, but eventually the police decided to take me seriously.
Little came of their investigations, except that Margarita had bought a bus ticket
to another state under her old married name. When it came to detail, I found I
couldn’t tell the police much about her. I didn’t know how old she was, I didn’t
know Mr. McMurtrie’s first name, I didn’t know how much she weighed or how
tall she was. The description I gave of her could have been any middle aged woman
with an accent.
Some months later, Father Benedict rang. It was late and there was a storm. I
was reluctant to answer the phone because of the lightning, but it rang so
persistently, I eventually picked it up.
He had no news of Margarita, as such. It was just that a strange thing had
caught itself like a burr inside his memory. An article in the regional newspaper. A
newspaper that was already a month old by the time it came to him. The article
was about a woman who went missing from a bus heading west towards the coast.
The bus company had alerted authorities, but no one had seen her since. She had
just disappeared into the night. The driver didn’t have her name on the manifest.
She’d bought a ticket just moments before the bus departed. The Father thought
little of it.
But then he had just received another month old newspaper and there was another
article, which was why he was ringing now. Three desert kids found a dress one
day, hanging from the branch of a tree, way out in salt bush country on the way
towards the coast. The children said the wind was blowing inside the dress and
from a distance it looked like there was a person in it, hanging from the tree. But
when they got close, there was no one in the dress. It was a red, linen dress with a
square neckline, the linen flecked though with black. The children took the dress
down and gave it to their big sister, who eventually told the local police aide the
story.
Didn’t Margarita have a dress like that? asked the Father. I seem to remember
... the day she ran away ... I just can’t be sure ... it was so long ago ... I thought you
might be able to confirm?
24
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I rang the police. They agreed there should be a search.
When the storm was over, I sat out in the yard and watched the lightning strike
along the ridge at the end of town and away over the blackened sea. The night was
dark and obsidian, the darkness cut through again and again by the shock of the
lightning.
I thought about attachments to people and places and the twin fears that can
grip us all. The fear of going and the fear of staying. Are they the same thing in the
end? Is it the same impulse? Can we survive, not being attached to anyone?
I thought about her red dress. Her red dress, filled with wind, billowing on the
low branch of a tree. What she said that day came back to me ...
Is easy ... you just leave. You learn. Nothing matter. See this dress? Is special
for me. This my running away dress. My freedom dress. I always keep this dress
with me.
r
Arafura Short Story Award
25
Magic Words
Ngaire Caruso
I woke up before the alarm even went off, despite having been tossing and
turning most of the night. Brett hadn’t stopped snoring the whole night – he was
still deeply asleep, snoring away, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Then again, maybe he didn’t – he didn’t seem to be fazed by anything, whereas I
felt like my world was falling apart. He still managed to be his charming gregarious
self, big smile, endless jokes, keeping his audience enthralled, whoever they
happened to be – the secretaries at work, the blokes at the footy club, the dinner
party guests… How could he possibly care for me when he could just keep living
his life as if nothing had happened?
Anyway I had to stop thinking like this. I had to give him a chance. I had to
give us a chance. That’s why we were going on this trip.
The alarm went off and Brett groggily opened his eyes and reached out an arm
to turn if off.
“Morning,” I said, attempting a smile, though my voice sounded falsely jovial
even to me.
“Hi Honey,” he replied. “All set for the big trip?” He gave me a perfunctory
peck on the cheek, got out of bed and headed off to the shower. Flashback to how
it used to be – most mornings began with a play-wrestling match in bed which
more often than not progressed to a morning bonk. We were both persistently late
for work, but couldn’t wipe the post-coital smiles off our faces as we were berated
by our respective bosses. Now I couldn’t even remember the last time we had sex.
No that’s not true – the last time had been four months ago after Samantha’s
thirtieth – we’d both got pissed and had a great time, and caught a taxi home after
dancing all night. Throughout the ride home Brett had been playing with my breasts
and had a hand down my pants while he was simultaneously talking politics and
football with the taxi driver – I’d been attempting to stifle my giggles and
involuntary gasps. We’d stumbled in the front door, and made love on the floor in
the hall. It was absolutely wonderful. But the next morning when I’d woken up he
was already dressed and on the way out the door to work, and it was back to the
ritual obligatory peck on the cheek.
Enough reminiscing – it wasn’t going to get us anywhere. Brett got dressed
while I went and put the coffee on. We had breakfast as usual – both with our
heads buried in our respective favourite sections of the paper, with occasional
stilted impersonal conversation between us, along the lines of “pass the sugar
please” or “bloody John Howard’s shafted the refugees again”.
After breakfast we packed the car and set off. Brett was driving and I was chief
navigator and DJ for the journey. “Any requests?” I asked him.
“Whatever you like,” he replied.
26
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
In the old days we would have had a spirited argument about what music we’d
listen to, and end up bargaining – he’d suffer through I Will Survive if I’d let him
play Khe Sanh. Now he was always so polite, so obliging, so.... so disinterested.
I shook my head and told myself to stop this incessant bloody retrospective on
how things used to be.
We drove for a while in silence.
“So how are things going at work?” he asked me.
“Oh okay. John’s giving everyone the shits as usual.”
Brett nodded.
Five minute pause until the next attempt at conversation.
“So how are things going for you at work?” I asked him.
“Alright. Same shit, different day.”
I nodded.
Scintillating stimulating conversation. I wasn’t going to be able to keep this up
the whole weekend.
The rest of the two hour drive was more of the same – both of us occasionally
attempted conversation openers which beget conversations that were inevitably
short-lived, impersonal and boring as bat-shit.
Finally we reached the turnoff for Alligator Billabong and headed down the
dirt track. The track was wetter and rougher than I remembered – then again, it
had been a long wet season. We reached the first water crossing – the track just
disappeared under the water for the next fifty metres or so. Brett stopped the car
and looked at me.
“What do you reckon?” he asked. “God knows how deep it is.”
“We’ve never had any trouble getting across before,” I said.
“I dunno Sarah.”
“We’re in the troopy, we’ll be right,” I said.
“I dunno”.
We sat in silence for a while.
“We could turn around and head to Red Lily instead,” I offered.
“If this is wet it’s probably impassable there too,” he replied.
“We could have a look there,” I tried to maintain a cheerful note in my voice.
“I dunno.”
Silence again.
“Look, maybe we should just turn around and head home,” Brett said. “I’ve got
heaps of work to catch up on anyway.”
I finally lost it. “I can’t believe you. We’ve been planning this trip for weeks, I
did extra night shifts so I could get the time off, I’m missing Jenny’s hen’s night –
and now you want to go back?”
“I dunno,” he said, in a flat dull tone.
I just sat still, looking straight ahead, trying to control the rage that was making
my head feel like it was going to explode. I couldn’t turn my head to look at him
or I knew I’d burst into tears.
Arafura Short Story Award
27
Silence again. Eventually Brett restarted the engine and headed into the water.
Suddenly the front of the car took a nose-dive down. The car slammed to a halt
and I was pitched forward, then my seatbelt jerked me back. We were bogged. No,
more than bogged – we were half buried into the mud, the car at a forty-five
degree angle, the water at the front of the car lapping the windscreen. Brett revved
the engine and the front wheels buried us further into the mud, the wheels at the
back spinning uselessly through the water.
“Fuck,” Brett screamed.
“Fuck,” he howled, his voice ringing with rage and loathing and frustration.
“Fuck,” he screamed again.
I just sat there completely frozen, too scared to move, too scared to turn my
head and look at him. For a second I even thought he might hit me, he sounded so
full of anger and hate.
Then he burst into huge sobs. I turned and looked at him. He was hunched
forward clutching the steering wheel, his whole body shaking as he let out these
racking anguished sobs.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to touch him, to hold him, but I knew the
anger and hurt were directed at me. I couldn’t touch him for fear that he would
push me away.
He cried and cried for what seemed like an interminable time, his sobs gradually
subsiding until he sat there motionless, taking in slow deep breaths.
“I can’t do this anymore Sarah,” he said slowly. “I just can’t. It’s killing me.”
He was still hunched forward, not looking at me. I couldn’t believe what he’d
said. I didn’t want to believe it. I’d never stopped hoping that it was going to be
alright eventually, that we’d be okay. Somehow it would be okay.
“Brett, please –” I began, but didn’t know how to continue.
Brett shook his head as if coming out of a daze and sat back again in his seat.
He looked straight ahead and continued to take slow deliberate breaths. We were
both startled by the sudden revving of the engine as his foot must have slipped on
the pedal.
Brett switched the engine off and undid his seatbelt.
“Anyway, the first thing we have to do is get the car out.” His voice was shaky
but he’d managed to regain control. “I’ll get the winch,” he said. But he didn’t
move from his seat.
I sat still and waited. I didn’t know what to do – part of me wanted to jump out
of the car and get the winch and to concentrate on the practicalities of the situation.
I was hoping I could busy myself with that while he settled himself down, so we
could pretend he hadn’t had that outburst and continue on as things were before.
His voice saying “I can’t do this anymore Sarah” was echoing in my head. I wanted
to pretend he’d never said it, to go back to our false civility of the past six months.
The other part of me knew that it was always just a matter of time before we
had it all out in the open. At times I’d felt desperate to talk to him, to try to make
him understand, but I’d been too afraid to break the fragile peace we’d established.
28
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I was just so scared of the inevitable rupture that was bound to follow. At least the
pretence of normality allowed me to hope that one day things might in fact be
normal again.
I looked over at him again but he was still facing forward, unmoving. I was
aching with the need to hold him, terrified I may never get to hold him again.
“Why did you do it Sarah? Can you just tell me why?”
“I felt dead. I felt like I didn’t exist, I was a shadow, an accessory you displayed
at work functions and dinner parties. You were so caught up in your work and all
your success and everybody loved you and wanted to be near you, and there just
wasn’t enough of you left for me.”
He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath in, but still didn’t turn to look
at me. He waited.
“You didn’t care Brett. You just didn’t seem to give a shit if I was there at all. I
wanted you to love me. I wanted you to need me.”
“So you fucked my mate? Hell of a way to go about it.” He turned his head and
looked me straight in the eyes. His eyes just looked tired, weary and defeated. He
didn’t even look angry anymore. It was more frightening than his anger had been.
I willed myself to find the words which would make it all better. Words which
could justify what I’d done so he could let himself forgive me. Words that could at
least make him care.
“Simon thought I was beautiful.” Brett flinched involuntarily as I said Simon’s
name. I continued on – I had to get it out. “He listened to me. His eyes lit up when
I walked into the room. You never even seemed to notice whether I was even in
the room.
“Even after I told you, you didn’t seem to give a shit. Do you remember the day
after I told you about Simon, we went out on Arthur’s yacht? you were the life of
the bloody party. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I felt absolutely dead inside, like I
couldn’t connect with anyone, couldn’t even pretend to talk to anyone, yet you
were having the time of your fucking life.” There was venom in my voice as I said
this, subconscious resentment flooding to the surface.
“Is that what you really think?” he asked me.
“How could I think anything else?”
We sat there looking into each others eyes. I felt naked and raw and absolutely
lost.
“I love you Sarah”. He said it straight out, plainly and simply. This was the
truth.
“I don’t know what I do, I don’t know what to say” I said, and burst into tears.
“I’m just so so sorry and I don’t know what I can do to make it better. I wish I had
the magic words to make it all okay.”
“There are no magic words,” he said.
We sat there and looked at each other. I wanted to reach out to him but once
again I was too afraid.
“I miss you Brett. I miss you so much.”
Arafura Short Story Award
29
“I miss you too.”
He leaned over and brushed my hair off my face. He kept his hand there, and
then brought his other hand across, cradling my face. Then he leaned over and
kissed me. It was a tentative kiss, a gentle kiss. A kiss filled with a fragile hope.
He pulled his face back and looked at me.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Well, we can start by figuring out how the hell we’re going to get the car out
of here,” he said, and laughed ruefully.
Just then we heard the engine of another car approaching from behind. A Hilux
rounded the corner and pulled up at the river’s edge.
The driver jumped out of the cab and called out, “You guys need a hand?”
Brett looked at me and smiled.
“We’re gonna be alright.”
r
30
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
First Lady
Andrew McMillan
Crouched in the shelter of this shallow cave, we were trying to burn damp
sheets of paperbark in an effort to ward off the chill and mosquitoes.
It was raining harder than a drum roll. Collapsing walls of thunder crashed
down the gorge. Lingering sheets of lightning drew in walls like stained grey
curtains, exposed flash-lit images of waters gushing through the creek below.
The cave’s floor was littered with wallaby scats and dead matches, each dull
phosphorescent flare reflected in the polished stone on which bums barer than
ours had rested for thousands of years.
When finally a sheaf of bark caught briefly alight, the darkness gave way to a
wavering glow. Ancient ochre paintings danced in the light. Wasps’ nests flicked
shadows across the ceiling.
“Nobody knows,” you coughed, “where we are.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said.
And then your teeth started chattering so loud I could hear them like fragile
jackhammers above the rain.
I tried to comfort you but you pulled away, still enveloped in sodden blankets.
“It wasn’t supposed to end like this,” you wheezed.
“It won’t,” I sighed.
The match’s pale blue flame flickered and died quick as an opal’s sting stolen
from the sun. “Yaka bayngu finish up!” you wailed into the darkness. “I wanna be
Prime Minister wife…” a feeble sob that drained away into depths pressing in
cold, damp and claustrophobic as the world all about was lashed, slashed and
whipped into frenzies catastrophic.
I was shaking the last couple of matches rattling in the box. I reached into the
duffel bag. The stuff on top was damp. I plunged my hand further in and emerged
with a fistful of fifties, peeling off a note and setting it alight. Incandescent flames
of every colour dripped whooshing to the ground and the cave filled with noxious
cords of smoke.
“It’s pucking plastic, you dubitj,” you coughed. “Can’t burn it, can’t eat it,
can’t spend it, can’t do pucking bayngu with it.”
I stumbled down onto the creekbank and peeled more sheaves of paperbark
from the trees. The little falls upstream had become a wall of white water, the
sandy bank we’d scouted at dusk had disappeared.
The crowns of the pandanus we’d rested beneath when you spotted the cave
were thrashing in rising waters. I clambered back into the shelter drenched to the
bone.
“Are you pucking stupid or what?! There’s pucking yindi baru out there! Big
mob crocodile!”
Arafura Short Story Award
31
“Forget about it, sweetie. They’re only freshies ’til the next falls for sure. And
they’ll be seeking shelter on their own.”
“What? Like in here?”
“Nuhp. Too steep, too rocky. Ain’t gonna happen. Just try to get some rest.
We’ve got a way to go tomorrow.”
There was but one match left. I dried my fingers as best I could and set about
peeling the drier sheets of bark into slices fine as crusted tissues. We’d exhausted
the desiccated grasses in the corners of the cave. I fumbled around in the darkness
for sticks, twigs and leaves.
As I gathered my pile the winds changed, swirling a chilling mist into the cave,
whipping some of the bark away, a ragged sheet floating in the air like a shroud.
You were coughing more and more, deep and tremulous and unbearably heavy,
a hacking through which I could hear the tear of tissue rasping through rumbles of
thunder.
The matchbox was damp. The redhead ground across the flint like a hoe in
mud.
Hunched over the paperbark pile, protecting it from wind and spray, I tried the
other side. The match caught… a spark or three… a feeble flare etched on my
eyeballs forever.
By lightning flash you were lying shaking, your head shuddering upon the bag.
I draped blankets of paperbark over your wracking form.
***
That car we pinched this morning… damned if I can remember what it was:
one of those generic hire cars with the fragrance of a Toorak toilet. Found it in the
pub car park at Adelaide River. Windows down, keys in the ignition; some tourists
never learn. We slipped in and slipped out. Turned left and headed south.
There were a couple of bags in the back. You rifled through them, dragged out
a Timorese blanket and squeezed the bags out the window. Never did check the
boot.
A short-term measure. No way we could get past Pine Creek, let alone Katherine.
It was 33˚ and you were wrapping yourself in the blanket.
“More better you take the Goldfields tour,” you croaked just past Hayes Creek.
“Big rain coming up that way. Get lost no time, yo?”
“Yo manymak!” I called. “Fasten seatbelts, eh. We’ve got Thunderbirds a gogo!”
I hooked the next left and hit the dirt.
Never trust a light automatic. Power steering’s fine on the tar but swims like
the squitters on dust. I played with the wheel – so light you could roll it like that –
and fishtailed back onto course.
Adrenalin kicks in at the funkiest of times. Sometimes it’ll creep up like Stealth,
sucking you into the slipstream. Or swamp you with exposures of deep deep heavy
shit and maybe screw your balls to the wall or nail your heart to the cross. This
32
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
time around it hitched a ride on side through patches of burnt scrub, shoots of
green on black, and fields of broken speargrass burnished gold among saplings
grey. Pink salmon gums on the ridges, trunks smooth as your breasts. Whistling
kites circling in the sky.
A confusion of feral donkeys on the track ahead. Some frozen, others startled,
scattering at a cracker-driven canter.
“Yakai!” you gasped. “Tucker! Gittem that one there! We’ve eaten bayngu but
roots and bloody berries for days!”
Touched the brakes and slipped back into second and slid between the stubborn
ones.
“What for you do dat? Them feral, but manymuk tucker allasame! Road kill,
eh? Fresh meat!”
“Not in plastic crap like this.”
“Ma.”
“You ever hit a donkey or a cow or a camel at speed? They shit themselves
when you hit them, this explosion of putrid spray smearing the windscreen and
you can’t see nothing for shit. Check out the wrecking yards down the Track and
see if I’m wrong. Bent motor cars, buckled radiators caked in crap.”
We drifted past a couple of interstate four-wheel-drives lingering by creek
crossings dry. Folding chairs and thermos flasks and everything’s fine. Hats of
straw and terry towelling waving us by. I was tempted to do a little freelancing for
camping gear and food but you were too sick to play the game.
So we grumbled south on a track that deteriorates into rocks, gutters and gullies.
“Keep goin’,” you cawed. “We can dump the wheels in one of the old mines,
plenty of pits, more than what you’ve got on your cheeks.”
And then you collapsed into a cackling fit somewhere between laughter and
torture.
The skies ahead were towering grey, threatening as battleships looming through
stringybarks limpid.
You directed me to one of those milky green lakes where miners used to toil.
Radials grumbling over gravel. Cold Chisel chopping blues over the cassette player.
You clambered out with the duffel. I pumped up the volume, switched the aircon to max, soaked the blast for a second or three then dumped a boulder on the
accelerator and jumped aside to see it off the edge.
Rubble against rubber threw that motor car off course; it veered and it wobbled,
finally toppled and rolled right out of sight.
There were scrunches of metal, the poomph of glass and the bellyflopping wash
and wallow as the white paint job settled uneasily into the impenetrable green and
Star Hotel withered in a ferocious hiss of steam.
I ran to the edge to listen and watch; when I turned you were gone.
I called out your name: once, twice, thrice: heard a butcherbird’s return from
below. I know them from the ridges and not from the vales; I followed your rounds
Arafura Short Story Award
33
with whistles warbling on, traced you to a shady spot against the duffel bag in the
parched bed of a creek.
I followed you down that water-worn gully, taking the burden of the duffel,
both stumbling over roots protruding from sand and shale.
We crept under the highway through a storm water drain and rested briefly in
its stifling shade.
Cars and rucks and road trains sped overhead, each preceded by a dull subliminal
hum that grew momentarily to a crumpling roar and faded quicker than it came.
You panted and wheezed and exploded into a cough that hit that tunnel with all
the force of a napalm strike, sucking any semblance of peace from the air.
We emerged into the grey glare in a break, stepping only on stones looking
firm, avoiding prints on the sand as the first faint rumbles of thunder beat drums in
the hills behind us.
The cover got thicker as we stumbled on, me with the bag, you trailing and
snagging sweat-soaked blankets of many colours.
We staggered into the springs, waded waste deep in water-lily swamps, leaving
brief trails through the bump and sway of pads and those trampled underneath.
You rooted around for tubers and stems. “Wakwak, manymak yo,” you spluttered.
“This stem, like celery. Just peel him and eat ’im raw. These nuts, we roast ’em up
yalala.”
In the east there were sirens wailing north.
We waded out sunset way, scampering over rocks the water ran through and
followed the creek downstream.
Those coppers wouldn’t have a clue.
We’ve been leading them around the country like so many chooks for a week
now.
Bet on it! They’ve been bolting ’round in circles ever since we hit the servo at
Jabiru. Muddy John Howard masks ’n’ all.
***
After that farce at Howard Springs on Sunday we had a shave that was way too
close.
A couple of Ds caught the scent on the edge of Black Jungle, chasing our tracks
through the mud. Would’ve been on us for sure if you hadn’t stirred up those
buffalo in the bog.
I don’t know where you learned to throw like that, back on the mission I guess,
but you hit that bull right where it counts.
Old fella took off like a Bondi tram and the rest gave chase in pursuit.
Those buff obliterated everything and foiled the coppers to boot.
How was that bloke up the stringybark?! Got up into the fork and the whole
flaming tree fell over. Termites one, coppers nil. You wouldn’t read about it.
We took off into the green and splashed down that stream through Black Jungle
so as not to leave a trail, ripping leeches from our legs as we clambered over fallen
34
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
logs and prehistoric mossy debris. Mosquitoes big as bats and snakes thick as
vines, the canopy so thick we could barely see. The only thing to give us away that
throat rasping cough of yours.
And then we broke into nothing at dusk – so much of that country’s been cleared
by five acre blockies – and those leeches, fat and black, were swinging from your
calves like tentacles.
We burned them off with cigarettes, but still our feet were a bloody mess.
We hung by the edge of Black Jungle ’til dark – those mosquitoes were relentless
– and then set off across the barren waste for the highway, stumbling across earth
ripped and torn and gouged, past smoking pyres of stringybark and woollybutt,
natives sacrificed for regimental orchards of mangoes.
I left you shivering in a storm water culvert, nicked the ute from outside the
Humpty Doo pub and then we hit the Bush Shop.
Like you said, “Biggest mobs listen to a tyre lever.”
They had those artist’s impressions on the paper’s front page. Didn’t look like
us at all. Your chin was all wrong and your hair’s much curlier and they never
looked into your eyes.
We didn’t stop to shop, just grabbed the cash and the fags and Throaties and a
couple of cans of tin-o’-meat, trashed the phones and left a trail of smouldering
rubber on the driveway.
A good ute that one: tight clutch, lotta power, brakes anchored in concrete.
Pity the radio never showed nothing more than a feeble fuzzle at best.
They wouldn’t have found it yet.
Never trashed it though. Too good a motorcar. Valiant utility that one. Special.
Had that thucka-thucka tic that resonates with power. (But when they do track it
down, they’re gonna have fun scraping the batshit off the duco).
We raced that web of dusty backroads, down through the Solar Village and
beyond. Within an hour we’d crossed the Stuart Highway and found some degree
of safety in the hills behind Batchelor. You knew that country from college. I just
wish we’d picked up some mossie coils and a trannie from the Bush Shop. And a
whole bunch of other stuff as well.
Sunday night we camped above the banks of the Finniss where the gamba grasses
grow thick as sugar cane and taipans rule the night. Covered the ute with grasses
crunchy and slept the sleep of the dead beneath the broken wing of a B-17. Didn’t
stir ’til the cockatoos started squabbling in the trees, a hand-span’s length from
sparrow fart.
We hid by the Finniss for three days – like the man said, it wasn’t freedom: we
were on the run – and there were too many Cessnas in the air for my liking, too
many weekend skydivers over the drop zone having an exhilarating look around
as they slid and jerked and tumbled through the heavens.
Your fever hit on Tuesday. By noon you could barely move.
I tried everything you suggested. I even mashed green ants’ nests in water in
that enamel pannikin that had been rattling across the tray; scouted around the
Arafura Short Story Award
35
riverbank and plucked the soft tips of paperbarks fresh; then scoured the plateau
for milky plum, but nothing.
You rallied on Wednesday and we made our plans, preparing to sneak away
before dawn so we could set the ambush in from the highway. I stacked the ute’s
tray with vegetation for camouflage: we’d have to lay out of sight for six hours or
more.
Payroll for the college at Batchelor came in off the highway on Thursday at
noon, right on time, just like you said. Bet that’s the last time they carry it in a
station wagon.
We pulled out in a manic spray of grass and leaves and sticks, overtook the
Commodore on the causeway and sideswiped it, sending it careening into Coomalie
Creek. It flattened stands of pandanus in its flight path and came to rest embracing
an old black wattle.
The water was running but shallow. Those two in the front were senseless. The
box in the back was heavy. I dropped it trying to heave it onto the causeway.
I’ve never seen you hit the water so fast. One last gasping surge of bottle and
breath. Truly Olympian. You had it up and over in a second.
We dumped it in the ute and raced to the old quarry, smashed the locks, piled
the cash into the duffel and dumped the box in a stagnant pond.
You directed me back to the old railway line and we shuddered south to the
river, the ute grinding over broken bluestone loose as can be.
Said you knew a good hide-out near Snake Creek.
Between rattling explosions of phlegm, you were singing what sounded like an
old song in Yolngu matha, intoning on and on and on. It intrigues the hell out of
me when you do that and I can’t understand what you’re saying.
“It’s just a gammon song, you know. Silly one about daddy long legs. Spider,
you know? Daddy long legs don’t bury their dead, they just leave them hanging
around the house like dried up pictures of their former selves… until they fall off
the wall, yo?”
We had every copper in the country trying to bust our butts and you’re making
up ditties about spiders I only ever used as sticky tape in the Wet.
You crack me up sometimes.
Like that time I told you my childhood ambition was to be PM and you started
giggling. And when I asked what was so funny you chimed “You Prime Minister?
Yaka! You got right skin, right school, but bayngu you be big boss. You got too
much long-grass on your back.”
That was the night before we made our debut in Jabiru.
Charged as. Found a Mazda outside the Rec Club with a gearbox sloppy as a
new mum’s dhaku and a fuel tank almost as dry as a nun’s.
The servo’s light a signpost to Bethlehem.
Me playing cockatoo from the aisle of oils, lubricants and fluids wearing that
stupid mask and singing “We gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we
ever do” over and over again while you’re side-swiping the Chupa Chups and the
36
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
chewing gum racks with the barrel of some old man’s goose gun and scaring the
nuts off that poor bastard behind the counter.
I dunno how much rubbish you knocked off the deck before he pissed himself
and split the till… but I never want to do a gig that long again.
No encores, okay.
I can hear the thunder now, God’s chair falling from the sky.
And I can hear the rain and the rising waters ripping through resin soaked grasses.
But I cannot hear your voice, nor your cough nor your breath and I dread the
arrival of dawn for fear of what I’ll find.
r
Arafura Short Story Award
37
The Tempest
(or walking off Progress Drive)
Karen Manton
Eight black kites are eyeing me off. They are not black; they are brown with
forked tails. Even in the tropics they huddle as if cold, standing motionless and
grave, strong on their feathery legs. They wait together, but not too close, each
one kept apart by at least a few metres.
The sand is rippling with memories of the water that has abandoned it. The
horizon has been hauling the waves back, further and further, to catch the falling
sun. Mangroves line the land, their amphibian ways letting them haunt places
where others would drown. Their living fingers come up through the muddy sand
in a miniature forest, breathing in the air needed for the hidden labyrinth of
underground pipes, the secret root tunnels that only crabs and sand bugs can feel
their way along. I wonder what it would look like underneath there, if I could peel
back the sand I am walking on.
On the surface this wide expanse appears as an uninterrupted flatness, except
for the occasional island of a mangrove and its smaller subjects, surrounded by a
moat of stranded water. But with each step are the undulating ripples, set close
enough to massage the ball and heel of the foot at once, so that my step is awkward,
taking in both the rise and fall of a wave’s imprint. Except for now and then, with
the relief of a distortion in the pattern—a soft, round dish of sand waiting for a
stingray to return with the tide and take up its old resting place.
***
An hour has passed, maybe two.
Plover birds warn me off their territory, with their swoops and their swift redlegged walk towards me, chin skin slapping to and fro beneath their mad yellow
beaks.
My dog and I are also walking as fast as the rippled sand will let us. The tide is
coming in swiftly. It always seems sudden, and happens unseen – the turn. I wonder
if anyone will ever catch it. The one breath, one glimpse when the direction of the
water changes, to pull in rather than dribble out.
The big orange pink sun dips into the sea, the clouds deepen their brilliant pink
and gold in a last flare. Dusk comes swiftly here, with night heavy on its tail.
There is a storm brewing. I can see lightning forking its way from across the sea
towards us in a sharp jaunt through dark air. The dog is nervous, like his owner.
I am scared of crocodiles, and other lurking creatures. The kites are sitting still,
watching. I have counted forty-eight in all. Only three fly up as we approach, and
circle around their mangrove and its moat. The rest huddle in their lone spots.
Guards, perhaps. For whom?
38
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
***
Caliban, maybe. I have always imagined him living here, behind the mangroves,
his face hidden in the sand, or his body hiding behind a rock. The unwanted one;
a muddy white stranger in the wrong territory. Promised by others the reign of an
island, but desperately out of control of it. Unable to carry the curse and yet wearing
it like a slime that won’t rub off. Unable to say sorry and forever sick because of
it. Working for the master and hating it. Always feeling hard done by, lost, rejected,
abandoned, with no stories or sense of his own that is acceptable to others; and yet
made like this by those very others who wanted to know the best places and how
everything worked, but have nothing to do with the consequences of stealing it,
other than to pour the dreaded cloak over him: Caliban, who led them here thinking
it would set him free.
The plague of everyone, he wanders about on the mud flats, underwater, under
grey sand, picking his way among the buried fingers, irritating even the sting rays
(since he would steal their sitting spots) and the hermit crabs (since he would haul
them out of their homes and stick their shells through his ears).
He crawls between the mangroves – with his arms and his fingers mirroring
their arched woody stance, digging his nails into the sand and hauling up crabs or
worms – wallowing and moaning for the heart he has lost, the umbilical cord cut
off but still attached to him, wound about some rotting trunk beneath the earth,
keeping him anchored to this spot as a prisoner.
The black kites close their ears beneath their feathers and narrow their eyes
with his howls.
The human residents hate him too, though they have no idea what he is. They
hate him for the echo of his presence, the breath he leaves on the air that goes
down their own gullets like a bad taste and makes them feel off about the whole
evening. He listens to their conversations. He creeps from house to house,
underneath the balconies, in amongst the palms, the compost, behind the mould
ridden walls, up with the bush rats in the jungle laden trees. Eaves-dropping on
everyone’s dinner party chatter – the philosophies, the politics, the should do this
and should be that, the we do this and we do that – Caliban reels in everyone’s
words, twists, mocks, deletes, adds, and returns the notes to their mouths, so they
will come out garbled, incoherent, senseless, removed, and the next day the drink
will be blamed.
They speak endlessly. Of the war in Iraq, of Australia and refugees, of Northern
Territory politics, and the juggernaut of Aboriginal organisations – what is wrong
with
them, what is wrong with us, how to fix it is culturally inappropriate or simply
impossible, but to do nothing is to stay the same. There are a thousand, thousand
scenarios and solutions, and a brick wall in front of each, that cannot be climbed
over, under, or around. And cannot be taken down. Because for every brick that
comes off, three other people place four more on top. And all the while Caliban
Arafura Short Story Award
39
sits beneath the slats of the balcony, with slits of light striping his stinky flesh,
smirking to himself and counting on his fifteen fingers, how many times the diners
say “they” in one night.
And when he’s had enough he hisses like an angry possum, or laughs like a
disgruntled bat, and sloshes back through the receding creek to his muddy
dwellings, muttering “they, they, they, they, they, they, THEY!”
These are the people who think they are not Caliban, and that is why he roars.
And howls, and weeps. Down in the mangroves. Because all the while they are
talking, laughing, raising their glasses and slicing their cheeses, he knows that he
would never be known as one of the US. They will keep him out, under their feet,
down in the murky parts of the mangroves where he can’t be seen, because he is
ugly, and worse still, could claim to have crawled from under the skin of any one
of them.
Unkempt, unloved, un-homed, he howls. And digs in the dirt, for it is said if
you dig deep enough, you will come out in the opposite hemisphere. Where he is
from, poor Caliban, poor loner left here, a convict and all his descendants in one,
a mutineer gone wrong, abandoned and unable to find his place. Forever the fish
out of water, listening at other tables, scooping up the various tit-bits of knowledge
and experience in the bowls of his giant ears, at the same time as licking up the
crumbs of barramundi, tofu and ginger, home spun pasta and marinated kangaroo.
I have seen him at night, under a full moon, covered in slime and moaning,
with one bloody hand gripping a rock, and the other plunging through the roots
and fingers of the mangroves to the mud. His skin is smooth in places, and leathery
as a crocodile in others. His eye teeth have grown to the tips of the top and bottom
gums, and must pierce his lips often, I am sure.
Squashing the seedlings beneath his enormous slimy feet (that have a spur each
at the heel), scaring the bush fowl and their song, so that they fly onto the roof and
skid about the tin on their claws, squawking instead of choralling – thus crawls
Caliban. I have watched him, while everyone else snores, making his way through
a garden and down the slope to the sludge of the creek that is on its out tide flow.
He leaves posies of ticks for everyone’s dogs, pissing like a king rat along the
way, spitting out the old shells he’s been swilling around in his mouth like lollies
’til the soft creature inside loses its hold and slithers down his spiny throat.
He exhales a foul breath that makes children turn in their sleep and break out in
a sweat, calling nightmare. The parents rise and comfort, placate, change the sheets,
adjust the mosquito net, look out the open window at the bugs in the light shining
from the laundry downstairs, and the panting body of a green tree frog on the palm
frond just in front of their gaze. They look out on a tropical paradise and wrinkle
their nose at an odour more potent than the piss of the worst rat they’ve trapped. It
is the smell of Caliban.
***
40
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I am brought back to myself with the kiss of cold waves across my feet. The
water is hurrying in now, rolling over itself to get there, moving in from the dark
horizon, a watery carpet. There is something sinister in its grace. I have stood by
the empty creek and seen the first trickle come in, the rest rollick along, the
whirlpool with its eddies begin. In five minutes it is full and gaining height, in
twenty minutes it is over my head.
The dog licks my leg in the dark. There is a crack and a long rustle from the
shadowy mangrove dwellings.
Ssh! Here he comes, calling:
The spirit torments me. O!1
They say he eats those who disturb him. And yet I must run, or drown, counting
the palm trees in the background, keeping an eye on them – the five in a row,
because as the sky is deepening still, their shadows are receding into thin air, and
I will be lost.
I can hear the buried fingers sucking in air, popping. The kites have gone,
suddenly, vanished with the last of the light. The dog is sniffing the mangrove
line, and I call him back from the waiting shadows, for fear of the red eyes of
crocs, and the mystery snatch of this mud demon, who is moaning no doubt Sometime am I /
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues /
Do hiss me into madness.2
The dog can smell him on the air. And I can feel his warm breath, licking the
back of my neck, or is it my face?
Is he behind me or before me, this monster of my own blood-line, my own
colour flesh? The one wearing the cloak of guilt and shame, smeared in the shit
others won’t wear. Dripping with the blood of unrecognised massacres and histories
that are buried with the perpetrators who now lie under memorial cairns dotted
around the country – the predecessors, hailed as heroes instead of what they are –
servants of some Prospero mastermind. The evil magicians intent on stirring up
their own tempests to advantage their fortunes, their ships, their daughters, their
thrones, all under a whitewash whirlwind that blinded the eyes of better souls and
now blisters the gaze of those who dare to look.
I wonder if I tell him I can see his plight, he will be moved. Or will he be
insulted, and more wild for it. Poor man, with his four legs and two voices. He
carries in his flesh the tragedy of shipwrecks, the cruelty of floggings, the injustice
of laws invented to subdue him, the trickery of rich magicians, the burden of the
history he was born into and has witnessed endlessly – since part of his illness is
an inability to die. Why should he not want to bring the ruler down? To rant and
rave, and wear his cloak of sickness and shame with rage, because the magician
will wave a wand and remove other burdens or free other slaves, but not this one,
not this one.
And it sticks so fast, this cloak of the master’s, a coat of tongues all sewn
together, forbad to speak the word that would free them all and let a new tide
Arafura Short Story Award
41
come in clean, perhaps. Or perhaps the new tide would just wash on up the old dirt
and rubbish, as it ever does. It would be better if he were wearing a cloak of eyes
sewn shut, that he could slit the eyelids open. For even if he could take off the coat
of tongues, wagging for their own reprieve, he would be sick until twice as many
eyes could see what the tide keeps bringing back in.
You see Caliban is no fool, as he is the one carrying the cloak. If you asked him
what is the word, he would open his mouth and show you his own cloven tongue,
and weep that he cannot sing along with the children under the baton of the
conducting magician, not because his voice has no pleasant ring, but because he is
not an idiot. Can a doctor really heal the wound that he/she cannot recognise?
“Even the best magicians cannot make it happen,” Caliban says with a lisp, and
sad, sad eyes.
So he goes back to it, digging in the mud for his heart, with one hand – for the
magician has buried it – and for the umbilical cord that hauls him downward, with
the other. It is still attached to some tree in another hemisphere, and won’t let go.
No sooner does he free it, than it latches onto something else, and anchors him
there. Who couldn’t pity him then, flailing in searing heat in the day, edging around
under the light dappled shade of a mangrove tree, where he is kept a parched
prisoner with nothing to eat but the mud skipper fish which he gratefully licks off
the closest branches.
Hours later, still pinned to some unseen point, he must dig madly into the mud
like a lung fish to beat the in-surging tide. He waits there, buried, until he can
emerge half alive when the water has gone, to feel the tickle of crabs crawling
across his face, and the light of a full moon piercing his eye.
You have to watch it here at night, because you might step on his face, and have
him bite your foot. I am looking for him now, running in the dark across the last of
the sand, to the point I have found, where it tapers in through the trees into a little
track. My feet are sinking deeper in the muddy sand, spiked now and then with
those periscope fingers.
I fairly run along the muddy path, for fear. The known creatures and the
subterranean are the same under this moon. Anything could suck you under. I
can’t see the dog. I can’t see him. Water is under my feet, running slightly ahead
of my toes, the creek is filling, the sludge is moving, on the back of a semi-conscious
Caliban, perhaps – I can feel him near.
The grass at the back of the houses is long, dead branches are snapping under
my feet. I trip over the drain lid, as always, step on the newest seedling, accidentally,
as always. If I can just get to the house before I see him, before I see his foul white
slimy face, looking dead in all the sludge. If I can get past where I know he is
waiting for me, half submerged – waiting for my ankles to be close enough on the
rocks that barbed wire holds to the bank, waiting for me to lose balance, when he
can leap from the water, grab my arm in a vice and haul me under.
***
42
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Blood-curdling, desperate, drowning. The shriek hurled itself from my lungs
before my brain even registered it. The scream of a woman whose arm is caught in
a Caliban grip. The dog returned, guilty at abandoning his charge. The mangrove
wraith must have taken fright, and let loose his hold. The dog was going berserk at
my back. With rage?
With joy! Oh happy joy, joy! Oh how good to see you, lick him to death, bounce
the mud flat paws all over him. It’s just the boyfriend, fuck we thought he was the
monster.
“Who the hell did you think I was?”
“Caliban,” I said.
He led me inside, muttering “You’re way too intense babe”, past the compost
heap and the canoe tied to the dead palm, under the house where the insects were
dancing crazy round the light and upstairs onto the balcony, into the music, the
candle-light, the smells of tofu and ginger, incense and chai, the sounds of a banquet
table full of people feasting and drinking, laughing and talking.
“Oh, Happy Birthday,” they all said, “we thought we’d have a surprise dinner
party for you! Sorry it gave you such a fright. Wow, what a scream!”
I sat down, placing mud-laced feet on the ribbed wooden slats of the balcony
floor, and felt my brain pulling similar boards across my frantic thoughts, like
venetian blinds, leaving only slivers of light to glimpse the other world through.
The dog stank, and someone complained. It’s not as bad as the rat, said someone
else. A toast was proposed, and given. I felt guilty for my thoughts about dinner
parties in beautiful houses in the tropics. I was one of us, just like everyone else;
except I was way too intense. I had got back to normal.
And then someone asked:
“Who’s Caliban? Is he coming to dinner?”
r
Footnotes
1. The Tempest, act 2, scene 2, line 65
2. The Tempest, act 2, scene 2, 12–14
Arafura Short Story Award
43
3 tales from 2 points of a compass
Karen Manton
I
“Sister, come to me.”
I had never heard her speak. And turned with fear, as much as surprise, to her
call. I used to clean the rooms of dead people who had just left us, and it often
crossed my mind, what would I do if they suddenly spoke out of that white plastic
shroud bound around their stillness with fat grey tape? She was not dead, this
woman, but I had forgotten she was a singer once, and a great talker, a storyteller
even. So the woman in the room next door told me.
For everyone knew everyone else’s business here, it seemed. The lives of the
near dead were laid bare, and those of us who looked more like we were living had
the morsels of our petty pace flung between strangers’ tongues as well. Whatever
the ingredient, if the taste was boring, there were spice–adders at the ready —
what they did not know they found out or made up, as was necessary to push along
the hands of the clock. The walls had ears here, and could whisper. Even when the
know-alls were on holidays, the gossip ghost weaved its way down the corridors
on its own.
But this one woman kept her silence, and her thoughts were running wild through
their own jungle behind the pale blue eyes staring beyond, beyond. Beyond the
white wall that shut us both in with all the smells of flesh that has lived too long
and air that went stale ages ago, somewhere around the time they put the air
conditioning in and closed all the windows.
It was said she had lost her mind, and did not speak. That she had been vacant
upstairs for years. A few words came out now and then, but did not make sense. I
heard it as a kind of gibberish, though a good deal of it rhymed, or began with the
same letter. I lifted her from her chair once, and in the second my ear was close to
her mouth, while the rest of me was staggering under her weight, I thought I heard
her say, “I trust you.” But afterwards you can wonder what you heard, and have it
explained away, by other staff, your own thoughts, or the sweat beading down
your forehead as you work (the air conditioning was stopped up behind the door
to ADMINISTRATION).
So you can understand perhaps, that when I heard a voice “Sister, come to me,”
I jumped slightly. She held my hand and hauled herself up to my ear, put her arms
around my neck, pinning me to the bed with her weight.
“I have two tales for you,” she said. “One from the north, and one from the
south.” From her pocket, she pulled an old compass, and pressed it into my hand.
“My father gave me that”, she whispered. “Keep it, so you know where you are.”
Staff are not allowed to keep gifts, but I would not disobey the woman who
spoke, so I wore it around my neck, in secret, and never breathed a word. And
44
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
neither did the other woman, except in the bathroom, when the noise of the shower
kept both our voices unheard. Had her mind come back? Or had she never lost it at
all? She said when she had the energy, she would tell me the tales from two points
of her compass, one from the north, and one from the south.
Over the next few weeks, she gave me little glimpses of each story yet to be
told. The first one, she said, came from the vision of a strange creature that a
young man had at Sandy Creek falls. It gave him such a fright he left the waterhole
immediately, and drove all the way to Adelaide River pub for a beer, where he met
a young woman who laughed at his yarn, and told him the dream was true. They
drank a bottle of whisky between them, and got married soon after.
“This explains my love for RRRambutans,” the old woman said to me, and it
was true, I had often found the skin of a rambutan in her sheets, though I did not
understand what they were to do with her story.
“RRRabbits I am also fond of” she continued, above the sound of shower water
pelting down on her skin, hard, as she requested, “but only if they are fresh to eat.
I do not care for frozen game.”
It was rare for her to find a meal of RRRabbit here, she said one day, beneath
the whirr of the ceiling fan, though she did have another friend who was a worker,
who smuggled in the RRRambutans. I wondered if it was the nurse who massaged
her shoulders as he wheeled her down the corridor. It was a deadly secret, she
said, and I was not to tell anyone. She knew I could keep secrets, she told me,
which was why I was to hold onto the compass, and come RRReady with my ears
tomorrow, for she would also be RRReady then, with her stories of the north and
the south.
When I came through the childproof gate the next morning, it was her absence
that greeted me first, in feeling and low whispers.
I would have liked to be the one who cleaned her room. But I had come too late.
Her bed was empty, the drawers pulled out, the clothes in their un-creased brown
paper bag. The sheets had been stripped. I noticed a rambutan skin under the bed.
Nothing of her remained, but the compass around my neck.
I took it with me to Sandy Creek falls, where the water was plunging fast and
deep, Red dragonflies skirted the waterhole’s surface, misty with spray, and a
slow water monitor followed me around as I shifted with the sun from burning
rock to burning rock.
Rambutans and rabbits, I thought to myself, as I opened the gift she had left
me, that I might always know where I am.
If you stare at a waterfall long enough, you will see the granite beside you
move, and hear voices in the thunderous spray. I heard her telling me stories, and
took up the third point of a pen, to write them down.
Arafura Short Story Award
45
II
R is for Rambutan Muse
(North)
Do you like my ring sir?” she asked, rising up from the brackish murk of a still
pond lined with bronze rocks, so that her face was splashed with the waterfall’s
light spray, though it was falling over the other side of the waterhole.
The copper and golden-flecked water monitor sunning itself on one of the rocks
moved off in silent caution, and the green ants followed his signal, hurrying away
in unanimous alarm at this sudden monster. She turned her eye to watch them
marching across the rocky stage, a line of green bottoms, bejewelled with one
drop of sunlight each, held vertical and precious to escape.
Her muddy hand was held up close to my face, in a fist. On the middle finger
sat a cicada’s shell, newly empty. She asked me the question again, impatient.
Why should I like it, were my thoughts.
“It is a magic ring, ” she said. “Kiss it and it will turn into a large yellow beetle
with purring wings. It will take you on its back wherever you wish, except hell.
And if you want to go to heaven, you must return the favour first, by supplying the
insect with a ten gallon drum full of rambutans.”
She wore a jacket spun from spiders’ webs, and a moss skirt that smelt of old
trees. Her hands were cold, like damp rocks. She curled them around my hot cheeks,
and kissed me on the mouth.
She tasted of moon water.
When I opened my eyes, she was gone. Melted away. A green tree frog sat still
on the mangled root fingers of a fig tree by my side until our eyes locked, and it
leapt away. A leaf swung lightly in its wake, hanging by one spider’s web thread
from the tree’s woody tendrils. I took the leaf in my hand. It was covered in silver
drops of dew. When I licked them I could taste the woman with the cicada ring,
who spoke rambutans.
III
R is for Rabbit-catching Moon-holder
(South)
They said she was a witch. But she wasn’t.
She said to us, “I am very strange, but I am not a witch. I am a moon-holder.”
We didn’t know what she meant.
She drew us close to her and said we must vow never to tell what we were
about to see, until seven years after she had disappeared and been taken for dead.
We promised solemnly. Then she unbuttoned her black shirt and showed us her
bosom. In between her two breasts was a little pale blue sphere with flecks of
light. She said: “This is a baby moon I caught a while ago. I will keep it until I
disappear and then I will let it go.”
46
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
She showed us the butterfly net she caught it in, saying, “You see, I am not a
witch, because I do not fly about on a broomstick. I fly on a butterfly net, except
when I’m cold, and then I fly in it.”
The net hung on a great hook stuck into one of the blood red walls of her house.
She said she was here on a mission but we never knew what it was and I was
too shy to ask. We helped her pick the cherries in her orchard and she paid us with
little stones—turquoise, lapis and jade. The only gems she wore herself were orange
because, she said, they kept her warm. (You must understand we lived in cold
parts of the country, back then).
Wherever she went, she was accompanied by her white ferret and its six, sleek
offspring that swam like furry snakes around her body.
She was very fond of bees, especially the ones that lived in her cherry trees and
made them blossom. “One must always have a great respect for bees,” she would
say. The bees loved her for it and followed her about, buzzing madly in her hair.
Every day she rode her bike to the flea market with her ferrets wrapped around
her waist, a swarm of bees streaming out behind her, boxes of black cherries
balanced on the handlebars and a string of dead rabbits slung over her back. On
top of all the cherries was a small suitcase with holes where she kept her cat,
Spartar, when travelling.
Spartar occasionally spoke. We discovered that when we called him Cat in
Black, and he replied “I am not black. I am EBONY.”
He was a very handsome cat, rather vain and arrogant, and always trying to bite
our hands or ankles. His owner apologised to us, but never scolded him.
“You see, I am not a witch,” she would say, “because I have no control over my
cat. I can never tell him off when I look him in the eye.”
The woman of this tale had long hair, not quite orange, not quite red or brown,
but all three mixed together. She wore it out to her buttocks, where it parted and
wrapped around each leg and in between her toes.
She spent a long time rabbiting with her ferrets, who usually ate half the kill
before leaving their warrens and emerging full and sleepy to lie at her feet. Or
rather, her boots — which she had never taken off since she bought them in Denmark
just before flying over the ocean in her butterfly net.
Being a vegetarian, she never ate the rabbits herself. Amongst other greens, she
ate the moss off the graves in the cemetery, which was over a hundred years old.
Someone had to keep them clean, she said, and no one else bothered.
“Moss is good for your teeth,” she claimed, “it keeps your blood thin and gives
your snot a healthy colour.”
And yet, she never found a vegetable that could sustain her fingernails. They
fell off frequently, but new ones were always growing underneath, so she didn’t
seem to care.
They said she was a witch when they saw her gnawing at the tombs. They said
she was mad and of the devil. They said all sorts of things and knew nothing.
Arafura Short Story Award
47
When the moon was full she danced on her father’s grave, just for a stir. She
and her Ebony cat and her seven white ferrets would leap wild all over it. While
other people pulled down their blinds, crossed themselves, and prayed before the
candles in their windows that God and Mary and all the saints would save them
from the ferret woman’s curse (we lived amongst the superstitious).
But the ferret woman was not cursing. She was dancing for sheer delight that
the old bastard, her father, was dead. She’d never loved him more than when he
was beneath her feet with the hair frolicking between her toes all smelly from
rabbiting. It was one of the rare moments when she kicked off her boots.
One day she called us together and explained that she had decided to disappear
down a plughole. She took a huge pumpkin from the compost heap and chopped it
in half, put her black cat inside, sang him to sleep and then closed the two halves
of the pumpkin so he could rot peacefully inside.
That done, she climbed into the bath with her ferrets running crazy all
around her.
“Faster, faster!” she yelled to them.
They ran so fast they looked like a white river. She melted into their running
fur, and the whole lot slid down the plughole. Her red hair was the last to go.
As for the little blue moon between her breasts, it floated out the slats of the
window and travelled to the large moon in the sky, where it hovered for a few
seconds before the big moon swallowed it up and hid behind a cloud.
At that moment the cherry orchard and the cemetery vanished from sight. No
one knew where the dead and the cherry trees had gone. So they built a new
cemetery, planted another orchard and attributed the mystery to “that witch the
ferret woman”.
But she was not a witch, god bless her.
IV
“Sister, come to me.”
I think of her now and then, and hear her differently — a voice tumbling
somewhere out of a waterfall, with all her rhymes and alliteration making sense,
and her laughter my own tickling muse. I keep no rabbits, though I must have
rambutans. As for the compass, it is my old companion — along with the old
woman’s magic, and sense of direction.
r
48
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Out of the Blue
Rosemary Sullivan
Someone was outside.
Perhaps it was a cough, or a shuffle that told her they were there. A dog skulking
behind the fence, a child’s whimper, maybe the movement of a head outside the
window. Honour could never remember how she knew, but she realised someone
was waiting, and glanced at the clock.
It was almost eight. She did a clinic session at this time every week day: dressed
sores, lanced boils, dispensed medication to the half a dozen Aborigines who would
wander up from their camp down by the creek.
Today was Sunday, and although her husband Tom was at work, everyone else
on Stringy Creek took the pace slightly more casually, and usually no-one bothered
her. Honour wiped her hands on a tea towel, and strode down to the end of the
house, through the office and into the small room where the station’s substitute for
medical care was provided.
She was not a nurse, but she was there. She knew enough to help most of the
problems presented to her.
She opened the rusty metal cupboard, crammed with dressings, paracetamol
liquid, head lice shampoo, ascabiol and antibiotics, then opened the door which
led to the rose garden, the gate, and the paddock beyond.
Ellen stood outside, balanced on one leg, her three-month old baby Morinda
wrapped in a grubby pink baby blanket.
“Morning Ellen, what’s up with our precious little one?”
“She little bit sick, mijijt.”
Honour indicated the orange plastic chair inside and Ellen came in and sat
down. The baby had diarrhoea. She was hot, but not alarmingly so. She was still
feeding, but the nappy Ellen showed her was undeniably foul. Morinda was old
enough now for baby panadol, so Honour gave her a small dose. But liquid was
the thing. She mixed up some oral rehydration salts in an old Coke bottle – Honour
kept a collection for just this purpose – to give her with a teaspoon. She told Ellen
to keep breast-feeding, and to drink lots of water herself.
“We have to make sure she doesn’t get dry,” Honour warned, and Ellen nodded.
Crook guts was a common complaint. Out here, you lived with it, even if it was a
bit of a worry, in one so young. Ellen shushed the baby when she wailed, and set
off back down to the camp.
Honour watched the young mother walk away, her bright orange dress vivid
against the glossy ebony of her skin. Her head was bowed slightly against the
blaze of the sun as she picked her way down the twisting rocky path. The track led
across the curve of the ochre hill, speckled with newly-sprouted grass after recent
rain, and down towards the camp.
Arafura Short Story Award
49
Ellen lived with her sprawling, extended family in an assortment of corrugated
iron sheds beneath a cluster of ghost gums by the creek. They were rudimentary at
best, but last year the McGees had laid some poly pipe so there was running water
inside the houses. It was not much, Honour knew, but it was something. The people
seemed happy enough. There were three-bedroom brick houses being built fifty
kilometres away at Gundarr, the government settlement, but none of the Stringy
Creek Aborigines seemed anxious to shift.
Honour swept the pitted concrete floor, and worried as she did so about little
Morinda. If only Ellen could get her baby to drink the rehydration salts, she should
be alright. Yet it was no easy task, persuading an infant to swallow such awful
muck. Why, she couldn’t stand the stuff herself. But she had lost count of the
number of similar cases whose treatment she had supervised during the past decade,
and the rehydration salts were critical to a swift recovery.
It was awful to see little Morinda so solemn, so sad. Since the day Ellen had
climbed down from the mail plane with that tiny, beautiful bundle in her arms,
Honour had been smitten. She loved babies, but her three had already grown so
big. Sometimes she could hardly believe her two boys were at boarding school
and only her daughter Sarah still at the station, still on School of the Air.
Having a baby around added a special dimension to her life at Stringy Creek.
Honour loved to cluck over Morinda, and had cheered her first smile, celebrated
each kilogram of weight gain. She loved placing her muscular black body on the
baby scales and watching her kick as she relished the freedom of her nakedness.
Morinda had arrived at the station a milky coffee colour but had darkened in
the sunlight and now was charcoal black. Ellen rubbed her body with peanut oil to
moisten her skin to a lustrous sheen, and coated her with liberal sprinklings of
baby powder. If you patted her back, great powdery clouds would emerge through
her cotton singlet, the scent as familiar to Honour as baking bread and wood smoke.
She took a slab of corned beef from the tub of brine in the cool room and put it
on for lunch, then folded several baskets of washing which she’d avoided for
days. She’d just added the potatoes, was replacing the lid which never fitted properly
on the dented aluminium boiler, when she heard a shout.
“Mitjitj.” It was Ellen again, waiting in the rose garden. As she walked across
the house to the clinic, Honour wondered how the baby was doing. She hoped the
panadol was at least keeping her temperature under control.
But when she saw little Morinda she knew instantly it was not.
The child was floppy, and her eyes were glazed.
“She did more diarrhoea,” Ellen announced, placing the baby on the elevated
narrow treatment bed.
Honour shook the thermometer and placed it under Morinda’s arm. The baby
was very hot, and her breathing was raspy somehow, laboured. They changed the
nappy, which was saturated and revolting, an almost gelatinous green.
Frightful. And frightening.
50
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
She removed the thermometer and tilted it into the light so the silver ribbon of
mercury shone; it was over forty degrees, just under forty-one. Honour faltered
for a moment, stunned. Then just as quickly, she regained her wits, filled a bowl
with cool water from the tap, and handed Ellen a flannel. “Wipe her with this to
cool her down,” she ordered. “I’ll have to call the doctor.” She went in to the
office to the VJY radio, and pressed the call button, tapped her fingers impatiently
on the desk for the static-filled pause before the operator’s voice crackled in
response. “Call sign please.”
“Bravo Juliet four-five-one. I need the doctor-on-call please.”
“Please wait.”
She watched through the open door as Ellen gently wiped Morinda’s head,
smoothing the cloth over her long eyelashes, her cupid’s bow lips, her round tummy.
Ellen was a tender, loving mother. Morinda was her first baby.
The wait was long, a full five minutes, but then she was speaking to Dr Rogers,
a capable and experienced practitioner who had often visited the station on clinic
runs. Honour described Morinda’s symptoms, and she could hear the concern in
her own voice, and wondered if the doctor could hear it too.
“I think we had better come and pick her up,” Dr Rogers said. “I’ll have to call
in a nurse and organise a plane. We’ll be in touch with our ETA. In the meantime,
see if you can give her some more panadol. And try to cool her down.”
Morinda cried feebly. Honour felt her head. She was burning. Burning. She
filled a plastic baby bath with water, and sat the baby in it. Her head lolled.
“I’m going to start the generator, Ellen, so we can put her under the fan. Just
keep washing her.”
Honour almost ran across the hill to the small generator on the other side, checked
the oil, checked the fuel, raised the decompression levers and slipped the crank
handle in the dog of the shaft, and turned it, faster and faster, until there was
sufficient momentum to fire the chamber. She jerked the handle out and let the
engine come to an angry roar, reset the decompression levers, flicked the power
switch and heard the engine chug at the load.
Sweat beaded her forehead. She raced back to the house.
The baby lay on the bed under the small fan. Her mother was wiping her still,
but she had not cooled at all. Her eyelids fluttered open, then sank again, fluttered
and sank.
Honour checked her weight and calculated the paracetamol dose. They gave it
to her slowly from a small syringe, a little at a time. Just when it was almost all
gone, she vomited, a wretched, choking movement.
Honour grabbed a wet cloth and wiped up the small sickly mess. She rinsed the
cloth beneath the tap, and returned to wipe her again.
The baby’s arm twitched.
“Surely not,” she thought. “I’m imagining things.” She berated herself.
But there it was again. A flicker, a twitch.
Watched closely, and saw it again.
Honour felt a shiver of panic, and struggled to repress it, to keep calm, to think.
Arafura Short Story Award
51
“Ellen, I’m going to send Paddy out to get the Boss, so he can come and help
us. OK? I’ll be back in a moment.” She grabbed the keys to the old Holden utility
and drove it down to the camp, calling out to the stockman resting on an old bed
frame under a tree.
“Paddy, please get the Boss for me, he’s out at the first yards,” she cried. “Ellen’s
little one is very sick and I need him to help me. They’re sending a plane, it should
be here soon.”
He took the keys and climbed into the vehicle even as she turned and ran again,
back up the short cut to the house, that same rocky path she’d watched Ellen walk
down that morning. Through the gate where the chooks clucked around, pecking
insects, oblivious…
“Mitjitj, mitjitj…” Ellen’s voice was high-pitched, fearful.
“It’s alright, it’s alright, they’ll be here soon,” Honour assured her, even as she
was filled with horror at the sight of the baby. She was still twitching; one arm
above her head, palm upwards, almost in supplication. Her breathing was audible
across the room. And her fever didn’t seem to have abated; seemed to be
even worse.
Honour returned to the office, and the radio. Surely, surely, they would be here
soon.
It had been half an hour.
It was almost noon.
The heat of the day was merciless, dazzling.
But Dr Rogers herself took the call.
“What is your ETA?” Honour asked, dismayed.
“I’m sorry, we are still trying to scramble a plane. How is she going?”
So Honour described it. The uncontrollable fever. The floppiness. The twitching.
The vomiting.
“We are coming, Honour, just hang in there, OK? We should have a
plane soon.”
But the trip alone was an hour, thought Honour. And she’s gone from slightly
ill to this in thirty minutes. She felt nauseated. It didn’t bear thinking about.
She had to think about it.
She watched the baby, helped wipe her with the cloth, and was praying now, in
her head, begging for help to God, Jesus, anybody… Just give us her little life, she
asked. Please just save her little life.
The baby’s pulse was fast and weak, a light staccato. The minutes seemed to
lengthen, as though time had turned to treacle, the seconds to syrup; everything
happening in a suffocating, stilted slow motion. The rustling leaves in the wind.
The tiny movements of Morinda’s mouth, her eyelids, her breathing.
The clock’s second hand jolted arthritically around, minute after excruciating
minute.
Honour prayed for improvement, but saw no sign of it. Saw her condition still
worsening. And then she knew.
52
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
The baby was dying.
The word was a punch, a slap. She reeled at the thought, even as she knew it
was true. Dying.
She rolled the word over in her mind, like an unpalatable lozenge. She listened.
Was that a plane? It couldn’t be. Only thirteen minutes had passed.
Thirteen minutes. Oh dear God.
She looked at Ellen, and saw the young mother watching her. Their eyes met,
and the glance was telling, and told everything. Honour knew, and now Ellen
knew too.
“I’m going to call the doctor again,” Honour announced, desperate to appear to
be doing something, to take some action. Perhaps they didn’t understand just how
bad it was. Didn’t they realise this was a matter of life and death? And they are
stuffing around in there, she thought with fury, the useless, useless bastards.
And unbelievably, horribly, it was still Dr Rogers.
“Honour, we’ve found a plane, and we should be in the air in about fifteen
minutes,” she said. Perhaps she believed these words would be reassuring.
“Dr Rogers...” Honour’s voice quavered.
How could she say: this baby is dying, when the mother was sitting there,
listening to every word. She couldn’t let Ellen hear that. It would be too cruel, too
awful.
“Please treat this with the utmost urgency.” She swallowed. “Please, please,
treat it with the utmost urgency.”
“I hear what you are saying, Honour, I do understand exactly what you are
saying to me. And I promise you, we will be in the air shortly…”
Tom walked into the room then. He’d heard her, and he too understood. He
came forward and held his wife’s hand, and they went back to the baby.
“Why don’t we take her into the living room, and put her under the big fan,” he
suggested. Ellen nodded with agreement, but when she picked up the infant, she
handed her to Honour, and it was the Missus who carried her into the living room,
and placed her gently on the bed on which Tom took his afternoon siesta. The fan
beat the air furiously, but it was not a fan Morinda needed, it was an intensive care
unit, paediatricians, drip-fed antibiotics, a ventilator.
Instead she had the boss’s bed, a wet cloth and a ceiling fan…
Ellen stood in the doorway and watched the sky, watched for the plane, perhaps
unable to bear the sight of her baby, so small and so helpless. Honour perched on
a chair, still wiping the defenceless, ravaged body with a saturated cloth. Tom
placed his hand on her tiny foot.
Her little chest rose and fell, with a rasp and a sigh. A dog barked down at
the camp.
She breathed in. Tom and Honour watched her chest rise. She breathed out.
They watched it fall.
The corrugated iron roof popped loudly above their heads.
A breath in.
Honour felt her pulse – so fast, so feeble.
Arafura Short Story Award
53
A breath out. Honour felt sure her breathing was getting even slower. Perhaps it
was her imagination?
But Tom had noticed it too. He put his hand on Morinda’s ribs, felt their slow
rise, the pause, the slow fall; the pause; the slow rise….
The screen door banged. Ellen had walked outside, was standing by the fence,
scanning the sky to the north, hoping, hoping...
Honour wanted to hope too, although she knew the plane was too late.
Far too late.
Felt despair, instead.
A slow soft rise.
Ellen was listening for the drone of the Nomad, but all she heard was the
generator, its rumble swinging on the scorching wind.
An almost imperceptible fall.
The plane wasn’t coming; wouldn’t get there…
Another shuddering little breath in.
The corned beef was simmering to shreds on the stove.
And out again.
They waited for each breath, willed it, begged for it, welcomed it, waited again...
Each time, they waited a little longer.
Until eventually, she didn’t breathe anymore.
Long before the plane appeared in the sky like a white bird out of the blue, they
had placed a clean linen sheet over the small, still body, and down by the creek,
the wailing had begun.
***
On Sunday afternoons, Honour McGee loads a drum of water onto the quad
bike and rides across the flat to the small cemetery. The plants she waters struggle
to grow on the hard orange soil, but they have lasted two decades. First the vincas
on her stillborn daughter’s grave. Then the yellow croton she planted for old
Kuminyi, who dropped dead from a heart attack cutting up a bullock, the axe in
his hand, astonishment on his face. And for little Morinda, victim of a rampaging
virus, the thorny bougainvillea. Granted, it has not thrived, but its woody mass
virtually obscures the tiny plot, and because Honour is parsimonious with the
water, in the dry season it flowers with a mass of vermillion.
After all, Honour knows now what she didn’t know then.
Always ask the doctor to come, so the choice is theirs, not yours.
Don’t ooh and aah over the little black babies with their molasses-dark eyes.
Never cradle them in your arms and fuss and called them precious. She loves from
a distance, not because she doesn’t care, but because it is easy to care too much.
Honour has learned the lessons of the land.
It has moulded her, as it moulds us all, in its own image.
r
54
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Red Earth Poetry Award
Greek Ducks Assert Their Independence
Marian Devitt
Batsi, Andros, Greece, July 2000
Each evening
as we stroll the curving road towards the bay
an infuriated old man
yells abuse
at his wayward ducks
White, red beaked, beady eyed ducks
they paddle towards the fishing fleet
The man wades into the water
exhorting them to return to their coops for the night
but accustomed to sand and salt
and the gentle tides
the ducks paddle on
defiantly riding the swell.
In desperation
the man bellows now
grasps a handful of pebbles from the rocky shore
and hurls the stones
along with his abuse
What’s Greek, I wonder, for
Damn you Ducks!
An old woman
moves sideways down the beach towards the man
her black skirt trailing in the sand
She takes his arm
he shakes her off
he is almost weeping
beseeching the darkening sky
She is firm
she might have done this many times before
Red Earth Poetry Award
55
He turns defeated
and trudges up the beach
the ducks paddle on
out through Batsi Bay
their weather eyes cast back
then taunting him
they turn,
just as he reaches the stone wall
and paddle in to shore.
He charges once more
a final chance before night descends.
Onlookers line the stone wall,
licking after dinner ice creams
They try to make helpful suggestions
as he wades out again
but I wonder
who
in the end
will win this war?
r
56
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
No Longer
Eva Rainow
No longer fearing drought
we open taps
No longer fearing heat
we clothe ourselves
No longer fearing thirst
our kidneys break
No longer fearing hunger
we starve
No longer having to walk
we die of sitting
No longer fearing distance
we fight too close
No longer fearing wind
we fade in houses
No longer fearing devils
we gaze stunned
r
Red Earth Poetry Award
The Taxidermist
Carmel Williams
He likes his wildlife
stuffed and mantled
Glory seconds
like frozen food
He deconstructs the world
Keeps his body parts
in the freezer
When he’s ready
he reconstructs
only what you see
even to the flick of head feathers
glint in the eye of an eagle
They will never move again
never feel the rush of air
under wing, scent of a mate
manic verb hunger
Slow, patient, quill by quill
He is a lover of silk
mathematics of form
reader of articulations
We all want that one perfect moment
To say how it was
down and plume
pepper and spice of it
The evidence of his art
proud clean birds
perfect eyes and stance
I feel him
57
58
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
up under my skin
He sweats through my pores
quick eyes search
Plaster-of-Paris fingers
His mind asks
how to freeze that flawless
rhythm of biology
colour of lived chemistry
I came here to learn about form
nine flight feathers
five secondary feathers
four types of wingsbut find motive more
compelling
What it is to gut
the object of one’s affection
He works alone in used parts
faint smell of dead things
even in the deep freeze,
it’s unmistakable
Does it matter
that it’s all skin deep?
That this end
like all ends – are flawed
What is perfect here
What is perfect anywhere
is the attempt.
r
Red Earth Poetry Award
59
Throwing Children
Judith Steele
The walls around Australia
are long grey waves
rolling continuously
over untold stories, deaths unlamented,
unceremonious sea burials
of excised truth.
The walls within the mind
are shadowed backdrops
for phantom fears re-conjured
by dalangs who’ve discarded all the voices
except the monotonal chorus of some scripted lines
re-drawn in shifting sands.
The walls inside Australia
wail with echoes
of convicts flogged, the stolen ones,
the silent scream of stitched-up lips, last cries
of our grandchildren’s children drowning
anonymously
beneath the walls around Australia.
r
60
My Brother
Meg Mooney
I knew you were there
my brother
waiting in the wings of my mind
now you come forward there’s another baby like you
an ‘unexpected difficulty’
pulling us up with a jolt
like a lift down a thousand floors
with you
I can’t remember the actual shock
the world fractured slowly
re-formed first in hospital corridors at night
fat little thighs like pin cushions
drugged eyes
I remember worry, uncertainty and
dreams that had to be packed away forever
you left home when you were six you had a jumper mum knitted
the colours of the footy team we barracked for
walked with a stagger, maybe the drugs
could say quite a few words
loved horses and trains dad took you to see them after work ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and ‘Happy Birthday’:
we often sang that with candles in a piece of bread
what must it have been like
for our mother to pack up your clothes
and send you away?
she just couldn’t keep going
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Red Earth Poetry Award
61
it could have been worse
we found a good institution
you had company, pretty good care all your life
came home every weekend
got to ride the horses you adored
to go on car rides with your beloved brother none of us knew where he took you
and you couldn’t have saved
our parents from unhappiness anyway
r
62
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Desert Dog
Deborah Clarke
A Desert dog is watching,
waiting in the moonlight of my mind.
It is always there,
as I tend the fire, do the chores of our camp.
I catch glimpses of its pale shape,
shying into shadows, behind rocks.
It never gives up.
When I am alone I build up the fire very full,
I know it’s frightened of the flames.
When my man returns we share the warmth,
the red glow of coals,
and we are safe.
Today is grey day,
it’s beginning to rain and the wood is damp.
It is hard to light the fire.
Smoke stings my eyes and fills the morning air with pungent clouds.
My man is out hunting.
I will go for a walk alone
but I know the dog is near.
I will walk very fast, high into the mountains.
The dwindling smoke from the fire will mark my home.
I need new air, new territory and a different perspective.
I know the dog will follow me,
it will leap silently from rock to rock,
invisible.
Sometimes I will hear a small cascade of stones loosed by its paws.
It is dogged.
It is waiting.
When wolves hunt buffalo they take days to bring down their beast.
One poor animal, so huge, so powerful,
is singled out.
Red Earth Poetry Award
Driven to distraction, run to exhaustion,
by the slow, relentless pursuit of the pack.
But this dog of mine has no pack.
It is a solitary soul,
in which instinct has mustered one sole intention.
Once or twice I have locked eyes with this dog.
A rare moment of connection.
Strange flame coloured eyes, burning with blankness I cannot read.
Is it hunger or is it love?
Is it desire or desperation?
What do you want?
And then in the moonlight in howls,
I want you,
I want you,
I want you.
There is no mistake, this dog means to have me.
But how long will it take and will I let my own will succumb.
Will I let my curiosity have me cornered,
where I can do nothing
but allow the inevitable to happen.
And I wonder what that would be?
I imagine for a moment
that fear evaporates.
That this frightening animal when confronted,
cowers and wriggles towards me on its haunches,
tail down, eyes up, submissive.
At this moment I could command it to be gone.
PISS OFF!
Instead I crouch down too
and extend my hand.
Its warm wet tongue greets me gingerly.
Then it slides a great golden head along my arm to my face.
63
64
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
I encircle the deep ruff of fur at its neck,
as it licks the smooth skin of my shoulder.
I giggle, it tickles as it nibbles my clothes.
I resist playfully and the clothes tear.
I am beginning to lose myself.
Fleetingly I am afraid I will be eaten alive
But I let it happen.
Dog and I are rolling in the dirt,
Growling, howling together.
Then dog is standing astride me,
still and dominant.
Waiting for the last time.
I look up into those deep amber eyes and I no longer care what I see.
Enter me,
eat me,
my own eyes burn permission.
And he does.
This is why the dog is so dangerous.
This is why it hunts me,
this is why it haunts me.
For I am hungry too
and afraid.
In the unspoken tongue of our tribe,
in the unwritten words bound close to our hearts,
this dog has a name.
A name for both life and death,
desire and despair,
love and fear.
The dog god of duality.
Some tribes call it
Taboo.
r
NT University Essay Award
65
Northern Territory University
Essay Award
Signals From The Other
Michael Whitting
And you must know this law of culture: two civilisations cannot
really know and understand one another well. You will start going
deaf and blind. You will be content in your own civilisation ... but
signals from the other civilisation will be as incomprehensible to
you as if they had been sent by the inhabitants of Venus.
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor
quoted by Graham Hancock, The Lords of Poverty,
Mandarin, 1991, p.1
Billy Wundrop is a neighbour of mine. Occasionally he comes over to my place,
but more often we meet in the main street of Katherine. The last time I saw him in
town was outside the Post Office early one afternoon. Billy had drifted over the
road from the ATSIC office where he’d been dealing with what he refers to as “ongoing blackfella business”.
Billy likes the term “on-going”, so he says. “How do you whiteys think up
those words, Mike?” he asked me once. “Everything is on-going, even death,” he
said. I was struck by this. I couldn’t quite fathom how death could be “on-going”,
but I didn’t ask. Another term Billy likes is “inner feelings”, about which he once
said, “Mike, aren’t all feelings inner feelings?” Again, it seemed as if his
interpretation was accurate, and again I chose not to ask. It seemed like I was
hearing the correct interpretation of these words for the first time, or was it merely
a signal from “the other civilization”?
In any case, it is not a good idea for whitey to enquire about what might be
meant by “blackfella business”. Unless you are very trusted you won’t be told
much, and certainly nothing controversial.
That afternoon Billy and I chewed the fat (yet another term he likes) about
nothing in particular, but as he was leaving he invited me over to his house, which
he has done before, knowing full well like the other times that I wouldn’t take up
the offer, principally because there is no guarantee that Billy himself would be
there, but also because the house would be full of children, cousins, extended
family members, and so on, none of whom would know me, and so the whole
episode would likely be an embarrassment to all.
66
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
“Anyway, Mike, come over and pay us a visit.” He was smiling his broad smile,
which reveals his gleaming teeth. “I’ll think about it Billy, but these mango farms
take up a lot of time.” Then I realised my mistake. “Speaking of mangoes, Mike,
you didn’t give us any this year. What happened?” Jesus, I thought. How does this
happen? Every time I speak with him, Billy catches me on the wrong foot. Am I
really this deaf to him? I made some feeble apology about not having seen him for
quite a while and 2002 being a poor season and so on, and then I started to go. As
I turned away he said, “I need to borrow your whipper snipper, Mike, I’ll come
over some time in the next week or two.”
When he eventually came one early evening we sat for a while watching white
cockatoos flying around the orchard and chatting about nothing in particular. After
about twenty minutes I noticed he seemed lost in some private reverie. After a few
more minutes I asked, “OK are you Billy?” He looked quickly at me and replied,
“Oh, sorry Mike, I was just thinking.” So we chatted some more before the same
thing happened again. “So what are you thinking?” I asked.
He paused, before carefully relating this story. A long time ago in primary school
in a remote NT community, he was taught by a Catholic nun who believed strongly
in eternal damnation and doled out harsh classroom punishment as an expression
of her belief. One of her penalties for misbehaving students was to stand them
directly in front of the classroom wall, from where they could stare at the wall
until she was satisfied they had repented.
“The first time it happened to me, I felt really angry at the start,” Billy said.
“But then I tried closing my eyes, which the nun couldn’t see. Eventually I began
to see other things in my head, like from around the house and the bush, and I
began to feel better.
“The longer I stayed thinking like this, the better it was. I saw my mother and
father, I saw my relatives, the old people, their faces, their smiles, and I started to
feel real good. Calm, I guess. Something was happening which I didn’t understand.
I stood there staring at the wall but I was seeing the cooking fire, the people sitting
around the fire talking and laughing and watching wallaby and snake cooking.
This was real good. I could see my brothers and sisters and friends running through
the bush with me, I saw us jumping into creeks and rivers, catching animals, old
people gathering bush tucker, and I learned how to see them every time I was
made to stare at the wall.
“So if I didn’t like the schoolwork, I would deliberately get in trouble so the
nun would stand me in front of it. It got like a habit, you know, getting these things
in my head whenever I wanted. It never failed. I could get away from the nun and
the schoolwork and the classroom. I can still get away like that now. Any time I
want, really. That was what I was doing just a minute ago.”
Christ, I thought. Billy meditates without knowing he does it. But then I rethought: of course he knows he’s doing it. I asked him what he got out of simply
staring ahead of him, regardless of what was there, but I immediately realised it
was a stupid question – from another civilization, perhaps – as soon as I’d asked
NT University Essay Award
67
it. “I get nothing out of it. What do you mean, ‘get out of it’?” I could see he was
irritated. I checked to see whether his left eyelid was lowering. Or flickering,
even. That was a sure sign you’d upset him, I’d been told. And while we just sat
there awkwardly I thought: my question was definitely from another civilization,
or planet. Billy knew without metacognition, without needing to know that he
knew. All I could do was to stop the conversation and see what happened. Nothing
happened, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
After he’d gone I got to thinking about what I knew about him. Billy is an
imposing physical presence: 6’4” in the old parlance, with a physique like Plugger
Lockett. When I stand next to Billy I am a midget, as are most people when they
stand next to him. He has huge, cattleman’s hands and a shearer’s back. He has a
broad nose, sparkling eyes and gleaming teeth. And when he smiles he beams like
sunlight. He also has a strange tic in his left eyelid. The eyelid lowers if he is
thinking hard and almost closes over if he is angry. I have not witnessed the anger
stage, but the initial phase is ominous enough. There are people in Katherine who
claim to have seen the real thing, and from what one of our neighbours says, if
Billy is ever met with a racist comment, then look out. The eyelid closes quickly
and his hands get very fidgety. At this stage, our neighbour says, it is best to get in
the car and drive home.
Billy has an immense extended family, and yes, Billy does not like the word
“extended” applied to family. “It’s bullshit, Mike. The people are just family. If
they weren’t family, why would they be there?” And the crowd of people he was
referring to is almost always with him. Several times I have seen him with a crowd
something like the following: his wife and four children, plus three of his wife’s
sisters and several of their children, and several other adults who may have been
uncles, cousins or part of that extensive pattern of skin relationships which is
impossible to understand without guidance.
The derivation of Billy’s family name is fun to hear, at least how Billy tells it.
“My grandfather was Arthur Wundrop, and when he was a young man he worked
as a stockman on cattle stations in the Top End. This was before equal wages, and
at the end of the long working day the station manager and others would sit around
together and have a beer.” I stopped him at this point. “Was that common, blackfellas
drinking with the boss and other stockmen?” He thought a bit. “If you were trusted,
it was OK.
“Anyway, the story is that Arthur made a name for himself by saying ‘Just one
drop boss’, whenever the manager asked him whether he wanted a beer.” I smiled
and asked, “In those day it would have been one glass, right?” “Right. But that
didn’t matter. Arthur’s reply was always ‘Just one drop’, no matter how many
glasses he was offered.” From what Billy says, there was many a “one drop” over
his grandfather’s life as a stockman, and eventually someone gave him the name
“Wundrop”. Now, I ask you, is this story true? Who knows. Even if it isn’t, it is.
Billy Wundrop is well known among small block-holders in the general
Katherine region. Billy describes himself as a “local contractor”, which can mean
68
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
different things to different people. We have had no formal business dealings with
him, which may be a plus given the problem he had with the police a year or so
ago in regard to what was apparently growing in one corner of his block. I asked
him about this once and all he would say was that the matter was settled.
It was my wife Carolyn who first met Billy, during the 1998 flood. Both our
properties exist on high ground in our immediate area, and even though Billy and
his family were not flooded their only recourse for food was what Carolyn cooked
for them while the army and emergency services restored the town. Food was
delivered daily via helicopter to several houses, one of which was our block. That’s
how Carolyn met Billy. I was living in Papua New Guinea up until Easter of that
year, but got to know him through casual contact on the streets of Katherine once
I’d returned to Australia. We gradually grew closer, and I eventually found him to
be a very useful resource about indigenous matters.
Some of Billy’s family members were apparently part of the stolen generations,
so I’m told, but Billy has no interest in talking about the topic. He does enjoy,
however, my explanation of why our prime minister is loath to confront the fact of
the stolen generations, ie that he purchased his own children from a Balmain
pawnshop. Billy thinks this is hilarious, but would prefer the topic never arose.
His mother’s tribal group was from an area south-west of Katherine, and Billy
was fortunate enough that his mother married a whitey who cared for her. From
their relationship Billy was exposed to uncommon opportunities through education,
and at the end of primary school he was awarded a scholarship to a Queensland
boarding school for his secondary education. He initially hated boarding school,
but eventually saw the benefits he was gaining in terms of employment prospects.
On a more recent occasion Billy came over to get help organising a controlled
burnoff on his property by the Volunteer Bushfire Brigade. The dry season was
almost with us and he wanted to be prepared. After the phone calls had been made,
we sat out on our verandah silently staring out toward the orchard until I heard
him muttering almost to himself, “You guys growing mangoes and hay and stuff,
you don’t feel about the land like we do.” He looked over at me, but I made no
comment. I was too eager to hear what would be said next.
“You guys, you and Carolyn, Collins over the road, Willis next door, you don’t
listen to the bush like us Aboriginal people. If you did you would feel the inside of
you becoming quiet, like the bush.” I peered over at him. “What are you talking
about?” I asked.
“There is no noise in the bush, Mike, only animals and the breeze through the
trees and grass,” he added. Now this signal from the other civilization was making
a lot of sense, and it felt like I was hearing it for the first time. But what was his
point? Where did the power of what he was saying come from? Was it the simplicity
of his language? “Go on,” I said.
“Well, there’s not much to say. If you listen to the bush there is no need to play
music in the background. The bush is all the music I need. The other is nice, but I
NT University Essay Award
69
don’t really need it.” Then he said something which I’ve not forgotten. “Recorded
music doesn’t really celebrate anything you know. Because it’s recorded.”
Well, this was getting a bit much, I can tell you. I have a very different view
about the value of music, and Billy knows this, but I didn’t want to stop him with
an argument. “Well, go on,” I said. “What sort of music is there in the bush?”
“That’s not what I meant. There’s no sort of music there, the bush is music,
that’s all. The bush is music.” Then he repeated it again. “The bush is music.” I
said nothing, hoping for him to continue.
“There’s another thing, too. When you know this feeling, Mike, you can’t make
an orchard like yours. You just can’t do it. Once you get the feeling of the bush,
the real feeling of the bush, the silence, the music, you just can’t dig it up like
you do.”
He paused then, probably wondering what effect he was having on me, so I
looked sideways through the eucalyptus and mahogany trees toward our mango
orchard, laid out line by line, with computerised irrigation and fertiliser program,
and I my head was flooded with the signals I was getting from Billy. I guess I
could see what he was getting at, or could I? Did I really understand it, or was it
merely literal understanding without the deep understanding and belief that comes
with an organic connection to the land?
Then he started again. “Sometimes I have to go out from the town, sometimes
just me, and meet the old people, and we just sit there, talking a bit but not much,
just sitting there doing nothing. It fixes me up, just listening and watching. I know
my place when I do this.”
Then he stopped. The way he’d been talking was the sort of thing you read
about, but rarely have the opportunity to confront face to face. I felt honoured to
hear it, but mystified as well. I felt as if I should write it all down. We’d gone from
looking at a mango orchard, to hearing the music of the bush, to thinking about
knowing one’s place, to returning to the orchard with a fresh view. It was wonderful.
Billy was moving through time and space, ignoring the linear verbal communication
I wanted, and even though it was communication from the other civilization, it
made perfect sense. I felt like I was in the presence of a spiritual leader.
Then he stood up and said “I goda gu na town.” I’d never heard him speak
Kriol before. “What did you say?” He repeated himself, and now that I was listening
closely his meaning was clear. Then he said, “You know why we have Kriol, don’t
you?” I thought for a few seconds before offering the standard explanation. “Well,
when two or more groups of people want to communicate over some matters,
such as trading for food, and so on, they develop a common language for that
purpose, and it goes on from there.”
“Well, yes,” he interrupted. “But the real reason we have Kriol is that whitey
refused to learn our languages, the same as they refused to learn about the bush.
It’s the same thing, Mike. Whitey didn’t want to learn from us, whitey wanted to
take from us.” This signal was perfectly clear. “Kriol was forced upon us because
70
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
whitey didn’t want to learn from us. Land rights was forced on us too, after our
land was stolen.”
Now it all made sense, at least in a linear way that I could comprehend. Neither
of us could add anything for a few minutes. Quite a few minutes, in fact. We both
just sat there, watching the evening light fade against the coming night. It was still
and peaceful, with birdsongs being the only sound. So I leaned over and asked
whether he’d like a beer, and he replied, “Just one drop, boss.”
I got up, entered the house, opened the fridge door and reached for two of those
red-label Coopers Sparkling Ale bottles. Then I thought: is Billy conning me? I
looked back out at him sitting there on the verandah, his huge bulk stretched out
with both feet resting on a mahogany log, and him continuing to stare out beyond
the pond and the garden toward the mango trees, and I thought well, I guess I
don’t care. Was that story about the origin of his name true, or had he or someone
else invented it? And I thought, well I don’t care. And what he said about the bush,
did he believe it himself or did someone else tell him and he merely remembered
it? Was it all just signals from another planet? I decided I didn’t care about that
either, because it was all true. So I went outside and we shared another drop.
r
NT University Essay Award
71
More Firmer – Less Terror!
Darwinite Recollections of the Moon Landing
Jane Clancy
Synopsis
It was the great dream of American President JF Kennedy to put man on the
moon by 1970. Tragically, he would not live to see his dream come true. That
dream came to fruition in good time, but who would have imagined that a tiny
outpost in the Top End of Australian’s rugged Northern Territory, would play such
a special role, on this historically significant occasion? However, that was the
case. This historical research tells the story of the 1969 Apollo-11 mission, through
the eyes of local Darwinites who experienced it.
The Darwin Connection
As Darwinites awoke to the news of Tuesday, July 15 1969, three astronauts,
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin, were going through their final
paces in simulated space-craft for their historic flight to the moon. They were
scheduled to leave on Wednesday, 16 July, at 11.02pm, local Darwin time.1 Despite
planning for a 5 by 3 mile landing area, there was no scientific way to pinpoint the
landing site and space officials admitted, “This is going to be very much a hit or
miss affair.” 2 During the actual landing, Collins would be flying the Command
module, Columbia, “above the moon in lunar orbit”, while astronauts, Armstrong
and Aldrin, would be landing somewhere “in the Sea of Tranquillity on the moon’s
surface”. They would literally be flying their lunar module “by the seat of their
pants”3 and Collins, in Columbia, would rescue them, if needed.4
In Houston, the outlook for blast-off was “star-bright” and the forecast was for
“sunny, clear skies”.5 Here in Darwin, the Bureau of Meteorology forecast a typical
Dry Season day: “Fine with light to moderate south-easterly winds, an afternoon
sea breeze and an expected maximum temperature 87 degrees.”6
The RAAF Base had an important supporting role to play. Apollo 11 was to
leave its earth-orbit to go to the moon right over Australia and the RAAF Base
was officially gearing up for the “critical 10 minutes” of this historic moon voyage.7
Twenty-four million dollars worth of equipment was loaded aboard three converted
Boeing 707s that were stationed in Darwin. They were part of a fleet of eight
Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA) supporting the astronauts.
Col. Richard Smith was skipper of ARIA 3, the leading aircraft. It was ARIA 3’s
job to relay commands from Houston, Texas, to the astronauts for the critical 10
minutes they were over Australia and heading for the moon. As a voice relay
station, ARIA 3 would provide satellite telecommunications. Each ARIA, unique
in the world, carried electronic equipment worth $8 million and a crew of 18. The
three aircraft would take off from Darwin at 11.30pm Wednesday 16 July, for the
72
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Apollo mission and return to the RAAF Base at dawn. They would then fly to
Guam to provide communications for the splash down.8
Darwin people, including school groups, flocked to the RAAF Base to inspect
the ARIAS on display and Col. Smith said, “We are proud of our aircraft, and
proud of the Apollo 11 mission.” 9
At 11.02 pm Darwin time, the 36-storey Saturn 5 rocket hurled the Apollo 11
crew, Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins into space from Cape
Kennedy, Florida. Millions of people around the world watching televisions saw
the Apollo 11 blast off from its launch pad. The astronauts boarded the command
capsule “2 hours and 40 minutes before takeoff”. 10 It was intended that Armstrong
would become the first man to set foot on the moon on Monday 21 July, at around
3.46pm Darwin time or, even earlier, if possible.11
The former US President, Mr Johnson, was among the hundreds of thousands
who went to Cape Kennedy to watch the launching and in a show of tokenism,
reminiscent of the sixties’ attitudes to indigenous people, it was reported that
“Among those given VIP seats near the launch site of Apollo 11 today were 40
poor negroes [sic].”12
The historic journey would take more than half a million miles and eight days,
with “the command craft parachuting its precious cargo of men and moon soil
samples into the Pacific on July 25 at 2.51 am Australian time” and all three
astronauts would undergo a 21-day quarantine against lunar bugs.13
The NT Scene
Back in Darwin, the locals were restless and a storm was brewing over Darwin’s
“sloppy dressers”. Letters to the editor poured in over Ken Water’s claim that
“Darwin men should smarten up”. The Editor went for “the ‘bludgers’, and society
drop-outs who don’t give a damn about anybody else”, while Mayor Bill
Richardson, introduced “Darwin Rig” at official functions so that blokes would
not look like “sodden wrecks”.
The Editor made a brave, or desperate, move to draw the two stories together:
“Over at Cape Kennedy right now three men wait to fly to the moon. They are
pictured on the front page: one in uniform, one in collar and tie and one in poloneck sweater. But they’ll do. When they have completed their fantastic job and
come back to the standards of this old earth…maybe we’ll have another bash at
getting Darwin’s ‘sloppy dressing habits’ back into earthbound perspective.”14 It
was a valiant effort!
In other news to make lunar week , indigenous mother Mrs Kathleen Martin
gave birth to a third set of twins, providing the NT News with ammunition to argue
the case against abortion15 and Mr Harold “Tiger” Brennan, Member for Victoria
River, introduced an Ombudsman’s Bill into the Legislative Council for the third
time, because “Parliaments are too worried with policy to be concerned with the
affairs of the individual”.16 Amazingly, Tiger reflected what many people today
still feel. And across the Top End, cattlemen faced low returns from cattle sales
NT University Essay Award
73
despite the fact that US prices for beef had gone up,17 and the North Australian
Workers’ Union organiser, Mr John Quinn, called for a government-backed
inspection of the “Absolutely shocking conditions” on some NT cattle stations.
Some quarters for Aboriginals[sic] were “rat infested hovels”.18 We were not alone
in our troubles.
The US Scene
On the US national front, Nixon’s critics warned him to “build houses not
spaceships” and said that his ability to manage race relations was tied to his “success
or failure in providing adequate public housing- especially for negroes [sic]”. 19
While US President Richard Nixon was announcing a planned withdrawal of
25 000 troops from Vietnam within a month,20 advertisements in Australian
newspapers were advising young 20-year-old men to register for National Service.21
Some registered and served their time. Many returned heavyhearted to a country
that did not understand them and some local lads found suicide a blessed relief.
Tensions
Tensions were high around the globe; fighting had flared in the Suez Canal
and, Indonesia and West Irian were causing us grief to our north.22 In a world
already tense, the Russian Lunar 15 threatened the American Apollo interests.
Experts feared Lunar 15 could collect moon soil samples and return to earth ahead
of the US, or scoop the first television pictures or, even more threateningly,
manoeuvre into an orbital position and disrupt the Apollo craft. In the
understatement of the year, American space officials reportedly said they were
“watching it, with interest”.23
It was a world desperately in need of uplifting. President Nixon told the
astronauts that their journey would “lift the spirit of the American people as well
as the world”.24 In like sentiment, local news reported that the mission “…for a
few days at least, links mankind as nothing else has done” and “raises eyes above
the shallow horizons” assuring us that “some of the emotion and genuine feeling
for men,…will remain long after it is over”. Little more needed to be said. Except
perhaps: “Good luck Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins”.25
Survey
Our spirits needed uplifting and in dear old Darwin town, an NT News reporter
went out into the streets “just for the heck of it” and asked people at random:
“How would you like to be the first person on the moon?” Lyn Keogh, 18, office
worker, said, “No thanks. I’m isolated enough in Darwin as it is without going to
the moon.” Mrs Fay Salter, airlines office worker, was more reflective: ”If they
are still doing this in twenty years time, I may think of taking a trip then.” In
typical Darwin humour, Brian Manning, vigilance officer for the watersiders, said:
“No, definitely not. I’m not the adventurous type, I believe in good old terra firma
– the more firmer, the less terror26.”
74
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Real estate agent, Ralph Bain, said typically, “Yes, I would like to be the first
man on the moon – it would be good from a real estate point of view. I think the
Australian and American Governments should sell the promotion rights of the
lunar trip to the International Association of Travel Agents and use the Australian
share of the money on water conservation in Queensland, South Australian and
the NT.” 27
Travel
With America and all things lunar being flavour of the month, travel agencies
encouraged tourism to the States. Burns Philip, on the corner of Smith and Knuckey
Streets advertised American holidays, while Ferguson’s Travel Agency in Smith
Street advertised budget fares from Pan-Am. Aussies could fly from Sydney to
Los Angeles between October and March for $675. America was an easy country
for Australians to enter. Formalities were “almost nil” apart from a little jab from
a smallpox vaccination, which in those days, was a “health requirement”.28
Snapping up the travel opportunities, “Talking Tex” Tyrrell and three others
were the first NT people to book seats on the first commercial flight to the moon.
Pan American Airways already had several thousand hopefuls and was taking
bookings for the prospective flight although no date, price or conditions had been
set. Mr John Smith, 53, of Smith Street applied. The only details needed were
name and address which Pan-Am sent to its head office in New York and a computer
recorded them. About 300 Aussies booked. Mr Smith’s firm would sponsor his
fare and if the trip was not made in his lifetime the seat would be handed down in
his will.29
Shops and Bars
In Cape Kennedy, millions of people began arriving and a “mood of mardi
gras” prevailed. There were the gimmicks – “a staggering array of souvenirs”,
including “Apollo coffee sets at $2.95…plastic spaceships and Apollo piggy banks”
and the 500 or so Cocoa Beach bars, “stockpiled with food, liquor and topless gogo girls”.30
The $24, 000 million moon landing provided lots of opportunities, even in
Darwin. Tom the Cheap in Cavenagh Street, where Warehouse 73 stands today,
took up a whole page in the NT News advertising Lunar Week Specials, while staff
lined up for the photo occasion complete with uniforms or, more daringly, with
mini skirts. What a bargain! Sausage rolls, pasties and pies for 14c each; Plastic
pegs (packet of 12) for 12c; 7oz Fly Spray for 58c and Wilkinson Sword (Packet
of 5) Razor Blades at 39c. Just what a Darwinite needed for a trip out bush! 31
Not to be outdone, the local theatres reached for the sky. The Star Theatre
showed Five Million Years to Earth. Despite the fact that Wednesday was Ranch
Night, reserved exclusively for cowboy shows, the proprietors managed to score
Universal’s Western; Pillars of the Sky, while the Paspalis Drive-In made do with
The Wild One starring Marlon Brando and the Parap showed Mrs Brown You’ve
Got a Lovely Daughter, featuring Herman’s Hermits’ song.32
NT University Essay Award
75
While the astronauts soared above the earth, News photographer, Veronica Peek,
was in Bali, courtesy of the Lufthansa Airlines. She sent back a picture of three
beautiful Balinese women dancing, and wrote: “three of the reasons so many blokes
favour a Balinese holiday”. Over three decades later, the image of Aussie blokes
holidaying in Bali is a memory, replaced by the terror of bombings burned into
our national psyche.
Returning, however, to the excitement of the lunar walk and the possible time
re-scheduling, Flight Control Director, Mr Clifford Charlesworth, had a bet each
way saying that the astronauts may want to try to sleep for four hours… “But it is
a distinct possibility that they will be too emotionally high and will want to get
out.”’33 And that is exactly how they were. They made their moon walk more than
four hours earlier than was originally intended.
Schools
The Territory’s 7500 schoolchildren were not allowed a half day off, like their
southern counterparts in television-viewing Australia, but headmasters were “free
to use their discretion and put live broadcasts over the school’s PA system.”34
Thousands of Darwin people got up early to hear live broadcasts of the
touchdown of the lunar landing craft, Eagle, on the moon and tuned in throughout
the day.35
Thieves, unfortunately, broke in to Nikolakis Food Store, in Fannie Bay. Perhaps
they enjoyed a really good smoko to remember? Their takings included $350 worth
of gear: watches to keep time, radios to listen to and cigarettes to sooth the nerves.36
Mr Doug Charlton, manager of radio station 8DN, said it was impossible to gauge
how many listened to the broadcasts but many people contacted him.37 Did the
thieves? I wonder.
NT schools participated keenly in the space program and projects included
“charts of the space race progress, models of rockets and satellites and a scale
model of the lunar module, made by Mr G Hill’s grade 7 class at Larrakeyah
Primary School.”38 At Darwin Primary School, the address system broke down, so
teachers begged or borrowed portable radios and students took notes during the
broadcast for projects.39
At Darwin High, students settled in for an unusual and rather exciting day.
There was no television in Darwin, so they had to listen to the radio via the Public
Address system; a small box strategically placed above the blackboard away from
chalk dust. Well before the moon walk, Mr Reuben Goldsworthy, headmaster of
Darwin High, gave the word and the public address system blared into life in
every classroom.
Mr Murray Browne was home room teacher for 2N1.40 The students sat in their
chairs listening attentively, while Mr Browne, an inspiring, young teacher, sat at
the front of room B6, tensely fidgeting with items on his desk. The final instrument
and space communication checks took ages, as strange voices “Roger-ed’ their
way in American accents, you only ever heard on Saturday night at the ‘flicks’.”41.
76
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
The landing tension took its toll on Armstrong, for it was reported that his heart
beat “raced to 156 a minute”. The first footprint “came at 100 hours, 24 minutes,
20 seconds after the blast-off from earth”.42 Armstrong “had to move his feet slowly
to accustom his balance to movement in one-sixth of the gravity of earth”. His
first words from the moon’s surface, came “loud and clear” as he trod the first
footprint in the lunar dust:
That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.
He had “inched his way down the gold-plated ladder in the cold shadow of the
lunar module, Eagle, and stopped a million hearts when he had trouble with
stretching the last dramatic step – a step that put the first man on another world
and mankind into the universe.”43 And 2N1 kids cheered!
In Houston it was reported: “Two men camped on the moon last night after the
most magnificent feat in the story of human exploration. Yesterday, Armstrong
and Aldrin made thousands of years of dreaming come true with an achievement
that burst from millions of televisions across the world.”44
The Outback
In Australia’s rugged outback, as the Southern Cross and a billion glittering
dots of the Milky Way lit up the sky, a dreaming of a different kind took place. An
indigenous family snuggled up in swags around the campfire and a boy busting
with enthusiasm chatted about his social studies project and the lunar walk. The
boy gazed up in wonderment as the man in the moon welcomed three explorers to
his homeland. The historical significance was not lost on his mother.
The moon, for her people, represented a life-giving force; an immense spiritual
power; sacred women’s business. She carefully avoided gazing at it, mindful of its
immense importance in time and place and, instead, gazed at her son. His face all
lit up with enthusiasm as he recounted all he knew about the mission. She caught
the eye of her non- indigenous husband, an Irish Australian and they both smiled
proudly as the young lad provided a thoughtful commentary on American
astronauts, lunar modules and the moon.
In the warm glow of the fire, two cultures miles and years apart, brushed across
each others paths…and millions of hearts and minds across the earth wished three
brave men God speed home.
Far away on the coastal plains of Australia’s Northern Territory, a religious
sister working in a remote Top End community experienced lunar week with the
traditional local people and passionately put pen to paper. Years later “a memory
shyly asked admittance” and she “welcomed it”:
The Murin tribe – out bush at Tjindi
On a hot, late afternoon.
Long shadows now and soft, slow thoughts
Of Australia’s dreaming.
NT University Essay Award
77
One man painting another’s back
For the night’s approaching “Wangka”,
Kids playing in the dust
And dogs lying, lazy.
Wisps of smoke and smells of coals,
Old women making damper,
Billy tea and kangaroo
And she there too, a stranger.
It was late in the night and after the dancing
(Like a thousand years ago)
When Tjani took his radio
And tuned the universe in
With words that brought a different quiet,
A response she couldn’t name.
“MAN TODAY WALKS ON THE MOON”!
“ATWA NINTJ LA LAMA”!45
Despite the costs, as three quiet achievers rested in their craft, preparing for
their re-entry to earth and a journey into history, the world for a moment, was a
richer place.
r
Footnotes
1
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2. Darwin time is more precisely known as Australian
Central Standard Time. Also, Day Light Saving time had not been implemented at that
stage, so locations on the Eastern sea board were still only half an hour ahead of central
time.
2
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.1.
3
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2.
4
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.1.
5
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2.
6
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
7
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
8
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
9
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
10
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.1.
11
NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.1.
12
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.2.
13
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.2.
14
NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
15
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2.
16
NT News, 18 July, 1969, p.5.
17
NT News, 24 July, 1969, p.1.
78
18
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.1.
NT News, 23 July, 1969, p.1.
20
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.2.
21
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.7.
22
NT News, 17 July, 1969 p.2.
23
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.1.
24
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.2.
25
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.1.
26
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.8.
27
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.8.
28
NT News, 23 July, 1969, p.22.
29
NT News, 18 July, 1969, p.1.
30
NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2
31
NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.8.
32
NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.15.
33
NT News, 19 July, 1969, p.1.
34
NT News, 21 July, 1969, p..
35
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.3.
36
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.3.
37
NT News, 22 July, p. 3.
38
NT News, 21 July, p.1.
39
NT News, 22 July, p.3.
40
The’ 2' stood for 2nd Year High School, or Year 9. The ‘N’ stood for Nightcliff the
suburb and the ‘1’ stood for the Academic stream. Nightcliff High school students and
their teachers, were being catered for at Darwin High pending the opening of the new
State of the Art High School at Nightcliff in 1970. All students and their teachers would
move across to the new school the following year, when it opened.
41
The Author’s personal story.
42
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.3.
43
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.1.
44
NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.1.
45
Sister Robyn Reynolds, OLSH, Darwin, 2003. Poem on the Moon Landing.
19
REFERENCES
Newspapers:
The NT News, 14 July, 1969, p.6.
The NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 15 July, 1969, p.2.
The NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.15.
The NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 16 July, 1969, p.2.
The NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.2.
The NT News, 17 July, 1969, p.8.
NT University Essay Award
The NT News, 18 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 18 July, 1969, p.5.
The NT News, 19 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 19 July, 1969, p.2.
The NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.1
The NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.6.
The NT News, 21 July, 1969, p.15.
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.2.
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.3
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, p.7.
The NT News, 23 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 23 July, 1969, p.12.
The NT News, 23 July, 1969, p.22.
The NT News, 24 July, 1969, p.1.
The NT News, 15 July, 1969, Editorial.
The NT News, 16 July, 1969, Editorial.
The NT News, 17 July, 1969, Editorial.
The NT News, 22 July, 1969, Editorial.
Transcripts:
Indigenous Woman’s Story – March 2003
Sister Robyn Reynold’s Story – March 2003
Personal Story – Author – May 2003
Artefact:
Poem, Man Today Walks on the Moon (excerpts) Sr Robyn Reynolds.
79
80
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Gender Strategies for the Employment of
Women in Non-Traditional Occupations in the
Oil and Gas Industry
Jennifer Haydon
Where do women fit in the Northern Territory Labor Government’s plan to
“Build a Better Territory” and what gender specific strategies are needed to
promote the employment of women in non-traditional occupations in the oil
and gas industry?
Involving women at all levels of development, thinking, planning
and implementation will make a world of difference not merely to
women but to the capacity of society to envisage and carry out
planned social change.
(Young 1997:366)
Introduction
Whilst indigenous Territory women have “matched it with the boys” in some
of the harshest conditions on earth for at least the last forty thousand years, until
recently, most women (black or white) have not considered careers in the biggest
boys’ club the world has ever known – the highly lucrative resources industry. For
those Territory women who do not choose to oppose resource development on
personal, moral or ethical grounds, now is the time to seek the rewards of a nontraditional occupation in the oil and gas industry. For the purpose of this essay,
non-traditional employment is defined as belonging to a discipline or area in which
women constitute a very small percentage of the workforce and have not
traditionally undertaken education and/or employment in that field.
Women who are employed in non-traditional jobs earn higher wages than women
employed in traditional female occupations. In August 1999 women in the Northern
Territory earned only 83.3% of the average weekly earnings for Territory men.
The low level of women’s involvement in male-dominated occupations is the major
contributing factor of the wage differential which still exists. While the workforce
participation rate for women in the Territory in January 2000 was 62.6%, men still
occupy a majority of the influential, and therefore high income, positions.
In today’s global economy, resource companies are looking for that
competitive edge that can make the difference between success and
failure. Human resources provide that edge – and no company can
afford to ignore qualified (my emphasis) people, whether they are
men or women. Experience in Canada, China, India and Vietnam,
among other countries, has shown that it takes a special campaign
to overcome the entrenched “macho” culture of the oil and gas
NT University Essay Award
81
industry and that the secret to productivity is diversity in the
workforce. (CIDA).
Women constitute one of the Territory’s greatest untapped resources. In the
past, academic institutions have not been successful in engaging women in technical
and scientific education, resource companies haven’t actively recruited them, and
government has done little to empower them to participate in significant numbers.
Past stakeholders, if they considered the issue of gender and energy at all, looked
at women as consumers of Westinghouse ranges and Whirlpool washers, rather
than as capable producers of critical energy resources.
When Clare Martin took office as the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory
in November 2001, she married in her own portfolio the Office of Territory
Development (OTD) and the Office of Women’s Policy (OWP). The union has
produced a vehicle that is capable of driving economic development in the Territory
whilst ensuring that gender specific policies become mandatory adjuncts to all
developmental initiatives.
This essay will discuss the Northern Territory Labor Government’s responsibility
to promote the employment of women into non-traditional occupations in the oil
and gas industry and what gender specific strategies are needed to augment its
economic development strategy.
The Office of Territory Development – Building a Better Territory
In June 2002, the Labor Government launched its economic development
strategy, Building a Better Territory, which included timelines and benchmarks
for development, arrived at in partnership and through consultation with key
stakeholders from across the Territory. The strategy describes the Northern Territory
as “the nation’s prime energy hub characterised by a burgeoning gas-based
manufacturing economy.” Bringing Bayu-Undan and Sunrise gas onshore are major
initiatives, as is providing infrastructure to support Darwin’s role as Australia’s
fourth gas hub and service, supply and distribution centre.
The importance the Northern Territory Government places on the development
of the oil and gas industry is abundantly clear. The Chief Minister chose the opening
of the Baker Hughes mud plant at East Arm Port to launch the strategy because
“as a company which supplies liquid and dry bulk drilling fluid products it is a
great example of a business attracted by the exciting developments in the Timor
Sea, and the Territory’s fast-growing oil and gas industries.”
Claims in the press release of “exciting, quality job opportunities and attention
to social policy long neglected” offers great hope to previously marginalised
workers but only indigenous employment opportunities are singled out for special
mention. Specific strategies targeting women for inclusion, in what is traditionally
a male-dominated area of the workforce, do not fall within the scope of the strategy.
To achieve an integrated approach to social and economic development
government needs to support gender-based analysis as “neither a mere passage of
time nor economic growth diminishes inequalities between the sexes. They may
in fact be increased by some development models … unless inequalities are
82
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
specifically targeted they tend to increase rather than diminish.” (Tomasevski
1995:xii) Apart from one minor reference to women as a special interest group in
the Employment, Education and Training Section (Appendix 3:54), there is no
particular mention in the strategy of gender needs. Research has shown that
apparently gender-neutral initiatives can have a discriminatory effect on women.
(Tomasevski 1995:xii) Equal treatment of persons in unequal situations perpetuates
the discrimination and does not result in equal representation.
The Office of Women’s Policy must therefore produce policy to supplement
Building a Better Territory otherwise the government’s silence on gender issues
may insinuate that the needs of women do not need to be specifically addressed.
The Office of Women’s Policy – Building Better Gendered Outcomes
With the dual aim of advancing the economic and social standing of Territory
women and preserving and enhancing the lifestyle of Territory women the Office
of Women’s Policy is compatibly linked to the Office of Territory Development.
The office recognises the cultural diversity and wide-ranging interests of Territory
women and ensures that the views of these women are considered in government
deliberations and in interactions with external stakeholders.
According to its website, the OWP:
• Provides policy advice and initiates, coordinates, implements and reports
on whole-of-government responses to priorities for women.
• Assists government to bring about the full and equal participation of women
in the social and economic life of the Territory, and to achieve a fair and
just society.
• Has a whole-of-government policy coordination and development
responsibility. This includes identifying gaps in policies and consulting,
monitoring, commenting on, initiating and overseeing implementation of
relevant policies.
As the oil and gas industry is forecast to have major economic impact on Territory
development for the foreseeable future, a special priority area to be included in
the OWP’s mandate should be the formulation of policy to facilitate the increased
participation of women in the sector at all entry levels. Accordingly, there is an
urgent need for gender-based analysis to guide policy decisions. Appropriate gender
specific strategies must be identified in the various sectors so meaningful interaction
can commence with industry players to create a more conducive environment for
women’s empowerment.
One of the OWP’s current project areas is Women in Leadership. This program
area aims to create opportunities for women to participate at every level and in
every sphere of Territory life. Without extensive industry expertise many women
will have to break into the oil and gas industry at the bottom, learn technical skills
and gain critical field knowledge whether they pursue trades jobs or aspire to
become, for instance, geophysicists and petroleum engineers. For those who have
more transferable knowledge such as IT specialists, accountants and legal
practitioners, upgrading of skills for industry specificity may be all that is required.
NT University Essay Award
83
As the OWP’S Women in Leadership also strives to increase the number of women
in decision-making and leadership roles, perhaps research could be done to identify
critical determinants of success for transfer from other industries.
The main roles of the OWP in relation to the development of the oil and gas
industry should therefore be to:
• Produce a Policy for the Employment of Women into Non-Traditional Areas.
• Network and coordinate women to share knowledge about increasing their
presence in the oil and gas sector.
• Gather and disseminate industry information, knowledge and opportunities.
• Play a pro-active role in bringing about change in attitudes and government
and corporate cultures.
Building gender-friendly corporate cultures
It is imperative that effective strategies are developed and implemented for the
employment of women in all categories and levels of employment within the public
and private sectors. In both sectors the employment of women into non-traditional
areas must be supported and encouraged by the development and implementation
of programs to break down systemic barriers and assist in the transition to a maledominated work environment.
The Northern Territory Government has an obligation to lead the way in strategic
planning for gender. The Employment of Women into Non-Traditional Areas policy
should include the following recommendations.
• Information concerning employment and training opportunities to be
provided in a manner which is accessible and relevant to women.
• Women should be actively encouraged and supported to identify and pursue
careers within the industry.
• Information and counselling should be provided regarding staff development
and career opportunities available in the industry.
• Consideration should be given to the special needs of women in developing
and implementing career development initiatives.
• Appropriately structured career development programs should be developed
and implemented for including a mentoring or networking program.
Government agencies should act as role models in this matter to demonstrate
government’s commitment to addressing issues affecting women’s equality in the
workforce. In collaboration with industry, opportunities should be identified to
channel women into challenging and high paying employment in non-traditional
areas. Employing and training women as technical advisors, policy makers,
managers and senior administrators within the public sector will promote planning
for gender equity and serve as a model for oil and gas companies to match.
The scope of this essay does not allow a full review of the policies of all major
resource companies, so I will use Woodside Petroleum, the major shareholder in
the Bayu-Undan development, as an example of current practice. Woodside has a
very “macho” mission “to create outstanding growth and shareholder wealth” and
its vision is “to enhance the quality of life by meeting society’s energy needs in
84
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
ways that make us proud”. Although Woodside does pay lip service to gender
equity on its website, as many occupations require high levels of skills and
experience specific to the oil and gas industry, companies like Woodside would
not employ women just to fill a quota. The only way the overall percentage of
women working in the oil and gas industry will be increased is by ensuring that
girls and women have the appropriate education and training and, if appropriate to
the position, be given the opportunity to gain vital experience in the field which is
one of the most critical determinants of success for technical occupations.
To measure, monitor and evaluate the success of internal equity programs
designed to encourage women’s involvement in the industry, companies need to
be encouraged, perhaps compelled, to keep gender disaggregated data so they can
translate their currently ethereal equity policies into practical, goal oriented
programming.
Strategies
Barriers/Discrimination
In the past, there have been formidable barriers to women’s employment in the
oil and gas sector and even today they are not present in significant numbers. In
the vast majority of instances there is no biological basis to this exclusion. Not all
work in the resource industry requires physical strength and not all women are
physically inferior to their male co-workers.
All employees in the Northern Territory, regardless of gender, are entitled to
non-discriminatory treatment and the Northern Territory Government has a
responsibility to oppose discriminatory practices and procedures. The formation
and promotion of policies that will eliminate the barriers is needed, and as noted
below, education of the public on why these barriers should be overcome.
Once employed in non-traditional areas women often face
discrimination – they are unwelcome in field assignments, blocked
from executive positions and excluded from the technical area.
Practical issues, like separate shower and toilet facilities in the field,
day-care and maternity benefits for all employees and equal access
to recruitment, training and promotions have made career
advancement difficult for women. (CIDA).
This is particularly true if the work occurs in remote locations or off-shore
facilities. The employment of women into non-traditional areas must be recognised
and valued by managers, supervisors and staff and those working in areas that
have traditionally not employed females should attend mandatory awareness
programs to increase sensitivity and communication skills.
Education
Often as a result of their own “self-deselection” women are under-represented
in trades and technological education. At Northern Territory University women’s
NT University Essay Award
85
enrolments remain heavily concentrated in the fields of arts, education, business
and health, while males dominate the technology fields.
If the balance of power in the resource industry is to be challenged on gender
lines then a safe and supportive learning environment for women to explore trades,
technology and professional education is needed. Related disciplines such as IT,
accounting, management, oil and gas law and policy etc are ideal alternatives for
women who do not have the desire to follow a technical or scientific path. Education
strategies for hands-on skill development for industry neophytes and academic
upgrading for others employed in low-paid service and support roles within the
industry is urgently needed to increase the speed which a critical mass of women
in the industry can be created.
Because this is a new frontier, women need access to information and appropriate
training to increase participation rates. There is a need to identify existing programs
and educators should also be encouraged to consider the specific needs of women
in curriculum design and delivery.
Public awareness of gender and labour diversity issues also needs to be promoted.
To alter currently gender-biased community attitudes, training materials on gender
awareness and productivity and diversity in the workforce should also be developed
and presented widely to workshops and seminars at high school, university and
public fora.
Recruitment and retention
The oil and gas industry offers a diverse range of occupations for highly qualified
people. As the Northern Territory generally boasts higher retention rates in
education for females than males and study at Northern Territory University seems
to be dominated by women there is no reason why women should not be better
represented at all levels of the industry.
As a reflection of current experience and skills levels, few women are currently
employed at any level of the industry and without a deliberate focus on gender
issues it is conceivable that the status quo will continue for quite some time.
Companies can attract greater interest from women employees by developing and
implementing gender-friendly employment strategies to break down the barriers
to recruitment and retention.
Once women are employed, employers must provide adequate induction
programs which recognise their special needs and, where relevant, assists in their
transition into the workplace. Further induction should provide supervisors,
managers and male staff who will work with women in non-traditional areas to
provide them with training and information to assist them with any necessary
changes to their work practices and environment as a result of increased female
participation.
The remoteness of the Northern Territory has always been a barrier to attracting
and retaining highly skilled workers from interstate and overseas. The engagement
of appropriately educated local women to supplement the male workforce may be
86
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
the answer to many of the problems currently associated with the Territory’s large
itinerant labour force.
Conclusion
In an ideal society no form of community development would take place unless
the proponents of change acknowledged the importance of gender based analysis
of development needs. Gender equity policies would be ratified prior to
development being approved and companies would submit progress reports to
government, describing the implementation of specific initiatives to increase the
participation of women within the company.
The Northern Territory Government would demonstrate its commitment to
promoting the increase of employment of women by introducing special programs
providing incentives to employers so women would be employed into nontraditional areas within the Territory across all categories, levels and disciplines in
the oil and gas industry, to a level proportional to their representation in the Northern
Territory population. Supervisors and managers would be provided with
encouragement and assistance in the employment, induction, industry specific
training and support of female staff within the industry so retention rates and
promotion opportunities could escalate.
The reality is that many of the commercial negotiations and interactions to date
have been conducted prior to any meaningful gender-related studies being carried
out and women’s role in the economic development of the Northern Territory has
not been properly assessed. As the oil and gas industry in the Territory is in its
infancy, no local data is available, but a 1999 survey of women’s participation in
the Bolivian petroleum industry yielded few surprises:
Women showed good participation rates in the administrative area,
but were virtually absent from technical positions — and were
nowhere to be seen in the boardroom (CIDA).
An examination of the rate of participation in resource companies operating in
Australia would be likely to produce similar results, however my example company,
Woodside Petroleum, does have one female member on its Board of Directors.
The survey also showed that the women who were employed in the
petroleum industry were more reliable, productive, committed and
efficient than their male counterparts – according to both colleagues
and bosses. Women’s record at work, combined with a growing
interest in the sciences on the part of young women, the restructuring
of the oil and gas industry, and the competitive pressure of the global
market, provided an opening for change. (CIDA)
To manage the change that is currently forecast, government needs to be actively
involved in establishing policy and, if necessary, legislation and regulations which
will compel oil and gas companies to adopt recruitment and employment plans
that are sympathetic to women’s strategic needs. This type of intervention by
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writer’s Award
87
government can assist in ensuring a strong, gender-balanced, “home-grown”
workforce, which will improve the long-term viability of Territory communities.
r
Bibliography
Tomasevski K, 1995, Women and Human Rights, London, Zed Books.
Young K, 1997, ‘Planning from a Gender Perspective’, The Women, Gender and
Development Reader, ed by Visvanathan N et al, London, Zed Books.
Internet references
Building a Better Territory, Northern Territory Government, June 2002
http://www.otd.nt.gov.au/dcm/otd/publications/major_projects/
economic_development_strategy/building_a_better_territory.pdf
Dancey Allison H,
Breaking Down the Barriers Program: Women in Resource Development Committee
http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Dancey,Allison.pdf
New organisation to facilitate participation of women in the energy sectors (South
Africa)
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/nta24801.htm
Oilworks Online
http://www.oilworks.com/October/index.html
Sherk Susan, Women in Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector
http://www.ccwest.org/english/conference/Conf2000Papers/Sherk,Susan.pdf
The Best Kept Secret in the Oil and Gas Industry, (Bolivia)
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/85256290006554868525625200069faa/
ff0b392f8d15d26285256ae300596c0f?OpenDocument
Women in Resource Development Committee, (Newfoundland & Labrador)
http://www.nfld.net/wrdc/
88
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Writers’ Award
My Grandfather Jakamarra
Kingsley Jakamarra Walker
Jakamarra was a wise old man who lived in Yuendumu. He was the father of
my father. Jakamarra was born far out in the Tanami desert at a place called
Yumurrpa. When he was a young boy, he never had contact with white people.
In his days as a young man, he was taught how to hunt with a spear and other
traditional hunting tools, way before the gun, then became a master of it.
When white people came, they moved all the tribes to a place called Mt Doreen
station, west of Yuendumu. That is when he came in contact with white people
and he also seen horses and cattle for the first time which looked strange to him,
then later he got used to them. Jakamarra now had his own family.
Jakamarra became well respected by his tribe in ceremonial laws, always kept
his family in the right ways of Aboriginal Law.
Today I know that he was a great Law man in his time of the old ways. This
story was told to me by my father about my grandfather Jakamarra, which is my
second name.
r
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writer’s Award
89
Street Dreams
Ameina Brunker
The pumping music is turned down and a groan from the party goers becomes
clearer. Teenagers scatter onto the streets like little black ants disturbed by the
invasion of an intruder. They wander off, to find some fun and forget about their
worries before the sun sneaks up upon them and reminds them of a sober reality.
“Ey, Danny-boy we bouncing or wat? Jay Jay, ’im gone already,” a small dark
youth shouts out to his bigger friend from across the street. Danny-boy ignores his
friend’s request and continues chatting happily to a girl with honeycomb skin and
thick black wavy hair.
“I’m rollin’ now, later. Trish enit?” Danny-boy says softly to her, holding back
his urge to show her how much he is already feeling for her.
“Yeah,” she replies shyly.
Selly the small Aboriginal boy with grey eyes asks his friend eagerly, “Dij ya
get ’er digits buddah?”
“Nah, wat you think Selly,” Danny remarks sarcastically. Danny-boy is seventeen
and just like many other youths in his position he takes each day as it comes.
He knows what it feels like to be hungry, lonely and cold.
The two Aboriginal boys run up the street kicking the light poles as they go by
and laughing wildly at one another when they miss.
They laugh to hide their pain.
Under the cover of darkness the boys soon catch up to the big built juvenile,
Jay Jay. He walks along the street lost in deep thought wearing a white baseball
cap, hiding his sad dark brown eyes.
“Jay Jay, you got ’im rocket up ’im ass, eh,” Danny-boy jokily comments.
The sound of Danny-boy’s voice brings him back to the reality that he badly
wants to escape. “Nah bros, just starving,” Jay Jay replies.
Jay Jay is starving not for lack of food, but because of not being accepted in a
society that prejudges him, because of his colour and appearance. Little do they
know that the indigenous boy has an interest in reading novels about other people’s
pain and suffering. He has long since finished reading all the books on his nanna’s
dusty bookshelf. Society only sees Jay Jay with a blinkered view. It is blind to the
sensitive soul within.
The three boys walk slowly up the unforgiving streets, followed by their moonlit
shadow. They watch the houses as they pass, knowing that there are little children
peacefully dreaming about their hopes, wishes and exciting humour.
The three black youths have dreams too. Danny-boy dreams of playing
professional football and settling down with a quiet girl, someone like the girl he
met tonight and having a family of his own. Selly wants to tour the world as a
stand up comedian, while Jay Jay just wishes to live his life in peace. But these are
90
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
only dreams and they will never be fulfilled. These are street dreams full of hope
overpowered and overshadowed by despair.
Around the block a sleek red sports car drives furiously, tyres squealing. The
beast screams around the corner, before coming to a full stop, just missing the
three youths. Laughter emanates from within the car and a deep voice says,
“Scratch ya”.
The car then again roars off into the lonely night.
“That was Bunda mob, enit,” Selly says, wishing it was him in that car. “Dat
car is nuff, shi-at I’d give up me good lookings to drive im.”
Danny-boy smirks at Selly and says, “Otchore, wat good lookings! Anywayz,
that car is hot and dem mob jus askin’ for a floggin’ by ’im bullyman.”
Jay Jay boastingly says, “We don’t need no flashy motorcar, we got ’im
foot-falcon.”
The boys continue walking along the street reminiscing about their carefree
days as young children. As they pass the houses which seem to get smaller and
smaller, the street lights becomes dim. There are old cars jacked up, broken windows
and doors, and messages of past lovers scrawled on the signpost. They now feel
at home.
The youths are alert when they hear that familiar siren, followed by the blue
and red lights flashing hysterically. Tonight’s happiness is shattered as their
expressions on their faces denotes that a storm is brewing.
“Aw shit, bullyman,” Selly sighs.
“What the fuck do they want, we ain’t do shit,” Jay Jay angrily comments.
Danny-boy doesn’t say a word as he wishes he was with Trisha, wrapped up in
the safety of her arms.
The patrol car inevitably pulls over beside the miserable youths. A tall lean
built man jumps out and moves like a sly lion stalking his next prey.
“Bit late for a walk boys,” the man in the light kaki brown uniform remarks.
“We’re on our way home,” Danny-boy audaciously replies. Danny-boy knows
the routine. Just let them talk and laugh at you and then they will be on their way
to find the next group of troubled youths to oppress.
“Hold on boy! I got a few questions I want to ask you.” The second policeman
gets out and asks his partner, “They giving you trouble George?”
“Nothing I can’t handle, John,” George replies.
The sergeants are fully aware of their authority as they parade in their uniform
and gun belt. It gives them an overwhelming sense of power.
“You boys know anything about the red sports car that was stolen an hour ago?”
“No sir,” the boys say in unison.
“Don’t give us that bullshit. We know you stole it. Just own up to it.”
Danny boy feels all his anger bottling up. His hands are beginning to shake and
his pulse is getting faster. The blood is rushing to his head. He grits his teeth and
tries to hold in his anger. Two hundred years of anger, humiliation, pain, frustration,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writer’s Award
91
and suffering passed down from his ancestors through his blood. Through their
blood.
“We ain’t steal no poxy car. If we did, would ya think we be fuckin’ walking,”
Danny yells at the two unimpressed officers whose job is to uphold the law. The
two constables instruct the boys to get into the back of the paddy wagon. Jay Jay
goes in first knowing that even his strength is not enough to overcome the injustice.
Selly follows head hanging low. Danny-boy is about to jump into the paddy when
John, the short police officer, swoops on him like an eagle and pushes him into the
nearby alley. The alley seems bleak and lifeless and the smell of a decomposing
domestic pet is overpowering. The heavens start to open up and in seconds, the
rain pours down and the moon disappears. It’s as if it knows what is about to
happen but refuses to see human suffering caused by a fellow human being.
“You asked for it, you son of a bitch,” John mutters to the dark youth.
A hit to Danny-boy’s head with the baton is the only thing he remembers before
slumping into a puddle. As he regains consciousness, he finds himself lying in the
gutter inside the alley. He lifts his head up but a wave of pain surges through his
body. He lies in the gutter in agony, overwhelmed by physical and emotional pain.
Images rush through his mind. Images of his past ancestors around a fire, telling
stories of the dreamtime, stories that have been told from generation to generation,
but now are lost. Lost in a society that exploits indigenous culture but has no
regard for its indigenous people.
Danny-boy sees a shadow that resembles an old Aboriginal man sitting down
on the red burnt ground. His head is bowed down and his aged hands move in
motion with the rhythm of the clap sticks. Danny-boy opens his eyes again and the
rain falls on his face. His vision becomes blurry as salty tears fill his eyes. The
beat of his heart becomes faint. He knows this is the end of his short life. He
senses death’s shadow, but he is not afraid. A strong feeling of tranquillity
overcomes his fear and sadness. He now realises the underlying truth that has
forever followed him through his life; that there is no hope in a street dream.
r
92
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Learning About Country
By Jane Christophersen
Bidburra and Ngunga were brothers who lived with their mother and father in
a community in a remote area in northern Australia. The escarpment stretched for
miles through their country and Bidburra often sat in the shade of the trees and
looked across the plains to the hazy hills.
“I wonder what it would be like climb the big hill and look across the country,
maybe we could see all sorts of animals?”
For days he sat and looked, until one day he said to his father, “Could we go to
those rocks, I would like to climb it?”
The father thought for a while and said to the boys, “I think it’s now time for
me to take you boys, so you can learn, proper way about your country.”
The boys were quite excited and could not stop talking about it for days.
“First of all we have to make spears for ourselves, three each, so that we may
get food. For we will be travelling a long way from here and we may be away for
some time. We have to visit lots of places, places I visited when I was a young boy
and I would like to see them again. When I was young my father showed me all
over this country and he told me when I had sons, I had to take them and show
them all the paintings and tell them stories for that area. This is what I will show
you as we walk through our country.”
When the spears were made father said to the boys, “We will leave tomorrow
afternoon after the sun has moved halfway down, because the plains will be very
hot and there are no trees for shade. We will walk until we reach the foothills
where we will rest for the night.”
They sat around the fire while Mother cooked long-necked turtles and yams.
They would carry some yams and one turtle with them. Water would be plentiful,
as the little creeks would have nice fresh water.
The next day the boys sat under a tree and waited patiently for the shadow to
reach the stick that Father had stuck in the ground to measure time. When the
shadow touched the stick the boys jumped up and waited for their father. They
said good-bye to their mother, she would stay with their relations.
“Good-bye, good-bye, come back soon, I wish I were going with you” some of
them shouted. “Never mind, tell us all about your trip when you come back.”
The three started walking through paperbark trees, the flowers were in full
bloom. They could hear the birds in the branches searching for bush honey and the
smell was so sweet. They walked at the edge of small billabong, the boys picked
the stems of the water lilies and chewed them, they were quite crunchy.
“Carry some with you,” said their father. “When you feel thirsty, eat them, as
we will have a long walk across the plains.”
The sun was quite low now and a little cooler with the wind blowing and the
boys and their father were quite happy to stop for the evening.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writer’s Award
93
“We will make our camp tonight near that rock hole as the water is quite fresh
and maybe we will spear a fish for our dinner. Before we make camp we have to
tell the spirits that live here that we have come to visit and look over the country.”
Father called and called, telling the spirits his name and the name of his sons.
After a while the wind blew through the crevice of the hills and their father said it
was all right to sleep the night there. The boys got wood to make a fire. Father had
two fire sticks which he would rub together and the ashes from the stick would
fall on the soft grass and start a fire. The boys made the fire and waited for the
flames to die down.
Father had speared a nice big barramundi and it was put on the coals. The boys
were licking their lips and asking their father if it was cooked.
“Just wait a little longer” he replied.
Soon it was ready so Father took it off the coals and put it on a piece of paper
bark to cool. After a while he pulled the skin off one side of the fish, the smell was
mouth-watering. After that side was eaten, it was turned over and they ate the
other side, slowly to enjoy it.
Ngunga said to his father, “That was the nicest fish I’ve ever tasted”.
“Yes,” his father said, “It is the way you cook it on the hot coals, not when the
wood is flaming”.
“I’ll remember that,” said Ngunga.
“We will sleep here and tomorrow we will climb to the top of the hills”
said Father.
Next day they rose early and washed their faces. After breakfast they started to
make their way up the escarpment. They stopped at caves and crevices, and their
father explained the different rock paintings through the area.
“Maybe one day your children will have to come up here and look at these
paintings and you tell them the stories”.
“Could you tell me some stories?” said Bidburra
“Yes, I will tell you how all these hills, rivers, land and people first came to be
on this earth. First of all there was nothing and then one day this Ancestral Being
of Rainbow Serpent came from the sea and everywhere that it went it made all
these hills, the rivers, trees and people in different places and gave them their
languages. You can see some of them in the rock paintings.”
“I would like to paint,” said Bidburra.
“Maybe one day I can do some.”
“Yes,” said Father. “Maybe one day you will come back here and paint.”
The next few days they travelled all over the country and learned different
things and how to survive with only spears. Soon they came to a big river and they
have to cross it to get home.
“We will have to make a paper bark raft,” said their father .
They found timber that had fallen down when the floods came through several
years ago. They got together six long logs and then father showed them cane vines
that grew in the jungle. They collected stones and knocked them together until
94
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
they got some with sharp sides. Then they cut the vines and tied the logs together.
It took them about two days to find enough vines and paper bark to make the raft
so that their feet would not slip through the logs.
Their father said, “We will put the raft in the water tomorrow but first we must
get a goanna and a wallaby.”
Bidburra said, “Ngunga and I will get a goanna.”
Father went hunting and speared a wallaby and the boys killed two goannas.
“We will eat some now and carry the rest with us”, said Father.
That night the boys took a long time to get to sleep as they knew in another two
days they would be home with their family.
Early next morning they pushed their raft into the water, they needed to get to
the other side of the river but further downstream to get home. Father carried the
two legs from the wallaby and one goanna onboard. Bidburra and Father had
made a long pole each, to push the raft along. They headed downstream slowly
winding past the huge paper barks on the banks of the river.
After a while Ngunga who was sitting in the middle said to his father, “Hey
Father look, look a big crocodile is following us.”
“Yes,” said Father.
“I have been watching him for a while, if he comes really close let me know.”
Ngunga kept watching, soon there were three crocodiles following the raft.
One crocodile, the biggest of all was coming too close, thought Ngunga. He told
his father and pointed to where he was.
Father said, “Give me a wallaby leg and I will throw it to him.”
Ngunga picked up the leg and passed it to his father who threw it a long way
back. It landed with a smack on the water. The three crocodiles cut through the
water and started to wrestle with the leg. It looked like they were fighting each
other. Splashing and rolling the crocodiles dropped back behind the raft
for a while.
“Just keep pushing,” said Father. “We will soon get to the landing.”
Ngunga said, “They are coming again Father.”
Father threw the second leg, again the crocodiles fought each other over
the leg.
“Quick.” said Father. “We have to get to the shore as we have only one thing
left to give them, the goanna.”
Bidburra pushed as hard as he could with his father and soon the landing was in
sight. The raft slid into the shore.
“Jump off now and I will throw the goanna into the water.”
He threw the goanna as far as he could and the crocodiles swam to it and again
they fought over it.
The boys and their father were very happy to be on dry land.
“I was really scared,” said Bidburra.
“Yes,” said his father. “That was why I wanted the goanna and wallaby. I saw
the crocs the first day we got to the river and I had to find a way to keep the crocs
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
95
from following us and maybe tipping the raft over, but we are safe now. We will
go a bit further and stay the night. We will get up early and you and your brother
will find food for us and we must take some back home.”
That night they sat around the camp fire and their father told them more stories
about the stars and the moon.
They got up early and looked under the ledges of rock and found two porcupine
and Bidburra saw a wallaby. He told his brother to stay behind the bushes as he
wanted to get his first wallaby. He crept through the grass until he was close to the
wallaby. He stood up slowly and threw his spear, it hit the wallaby in the chest and
it fell over.
“Come and help me,” he called to his brother. The wallaby was dead and they
tied it to a stick so they both could carry it. They could see smoke from the family
campfire and hear people talking.
“Coo’-ee, Coo’-ee!” they called out and soon everyone was running to see the
boys and their father return.
That night there was a corroboree and story telling and some of the young boys
said, “We will do the journey like Bidburra and Ngunga did.”
Maybe one day Bidburra and Ngunga will take their children up there and tell
the stories like their father did. Even to this day the story of the crocodiles swimming
towards the raft makes the boys shiver. They just feel so happy that their father
thought of taking the food with them to throw to the crocodiles so that they could
get safely back to their families.
r
96
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Kath Manzie
Youth Literary Award
The Myth of Mountain Healing
Kelly-Lee Hickey
Skin meshed with alcohol, hard lines across the bar. Patriarchy swaps sides for
the second half and all his cronies look up the bar maid’s skirt.
Chaos needs no sympathy in these rutted ice cream towns. I remember the
isolation so strong, its subtle seeping fumes creeping into my head so slowly I
thought the whole thing was a novel I read.
But I remember it, the plot lines twisted with factual paranoia. Melted down
plums falling wayside along the train track. I lay there with them in the gutter.
Those plums were my metaphors, time keepers. When they grew ripe I
would leave.
Ripe. Each day, I testing, stone fruit virgin, face pressed against paling purple.
Wishing grave yard bus trips, wishing domestication, plum jam, carrying petunias
wrapped in plastic and singing poetry to the dog because I had broken or discarded
everything else I had.
I remember watching his weather gods fucking, Lame teenage hands fumbling
across the sky. I thought my deities would not settle for this, they would know
how to put on a show. It rained cucumbers and chickens, sometimes kind words
from his mouth. I collected them in my bedroom and drank gin in the rain.
How we sweated in his heated backroom, in single motel beds, where the floor
that I slept on smelt like his drunken sweat. All his gifts were damaged, they were
gifts that I could never return. So I cherished each imperfection, weaving them
into my breath.
Nights were sweating, freezing, crying, grasping stereo sounds, seeking melodies
to relate my emotions back to myself. I needed something like a phone call, like a
world beyond his door. So I made pancakes with glace cherries, waiting for the
plums to fall.
What finally dropped was the penny, not the plums. Too many dole cheques
weathered by domestic dreaming. I smelt Sydney wastelands in the air. Entangled
in his flesh I spoke whispers of another place where lights shone like sambal
across meat and potato suburban streets.
I left almost immediately. Too much haste in the lunar rising, ah old devil, old
bitch, old crone of the sky. She was there, yelling at me to get on the bus and get
out of this single supermarket town. After a night doused in a bottle of gin and
phone calls I let him betray my body one last time.
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
97
There were gel caps on the horizon as I turned the dog away. Seeking that last
drop of mountain tonic, trying to capture it through gelatin eyes. I packed memories
of tooth paste symbolism, left letters and crisp plum juice. Started running at the
train lines and did not stop for the next two days.
r
98
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
The Storm
Fionnuala Denniss
I watch her lie there, tongue lolling out from the side of her mouth as she pants
heavily, exhausted from the heat. A large brazen blue bottle lands by her nose,
both her eyes watch its every move. But the heat is too much, and the fly stays
undisturbed. I flick the television over, cricket, tennis and the news! Sweat slowly
trickles down the back of my knee, the fan offering no comfort except to stir the
heat around the room. My thigh sticks to the leather sofa, sweat gluing me to the
chair as I reach for the remote once again.
Outside the flowers have wilted, and the grass crunches as mum walks across
the lawn to hang out the washing, her eyes squinting against the glare of the sun.
The blue bottle now buzzes around and round my head with the roar of a V8
engine against the dead silence that surrounds the house. There are no birds singing,
dogs barking or people talking, just me and the fly.
Slowly a familiar scent creeps through the house, overwhelming my lungs with
dense, heavy air, my nostrils flaring as I inhale deeply. Discretely the light
disappears, transforming every object into shades of deep grey and blue. I check
my watch, 3 o’clock, yet I would swear that the sun had just set and nightfall was
arriving. The air turns cool as the heat of the day is lost to the dark shadows cast
by the clouds rolling over the house.
Outside palm fronds rustle as the wind crosses the garden breaking the silence
in a wave, growing stronger and louder. The wind chime no longer plays gentle,
delicate melodies, but aggressively twists and turns with no tunes but only cruel
pandemonium. To add to the sudden roar of chaos each bedroom door slams one
by one, like bombs exploding. All but one, which knocks back and forth like a
migraine, thumping over and over until thankfully, it is finally tied back. Then dad
turns the television up louder to hear the weather report, “Newsflash” for you dad,
we’re in for a storm.
Looking outside across the pool I see small ripples form as the first drops of
rain break the surface. Each drop creates a perfect circle that slowly expands and
disappears before my eyes. Gradually the ripples become larger, and one by one
each drop falls faster and heavier than the last, until the rain is pelting like hail
against the metal roof. Now there is no noise from the television or the doors or
the wind-chime, only the roar of the rain and wind so loud I can barely hear myself
call for the dogs.
In the distance the thunder creeps closer, but there is no lightning to be seen.
Outside the dog barks in the direction of the thunder, while the cat sits under the
kitchen table with his ears pressed flat to his head and eyes wide like a rabbit. A
flash outside illuminates the garden, defining every tree, branch and leaf with
great detail, immediately followed by thunder. Every muscle in my body goes
tense and my heart rate rises instantly as the crack shakes the walls and the rumbling
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
99
of the thunder continues, making them vibrate for seconds after the strike. Now
the only thing to do is wait for the storm to pass, just sit back and enjoy the show.
The storm has passed and the air is cool and damp, all around me everything
has suddenly become alive. The house is no longer silent, yet it is not overwhelmed
by the roar of the wind and the rain. Instead noise of life fills the silence. Birds
that I thought had abandoned the heat can now be heard calling, talking and singing
to each other. The dog suddenly full of energy decides to hunt down the fly that
had tormented her, while at the same time bark back at the birds singing to one
another. Now everyone is up and active, revived by the power of the storm.
The flowers are no longer wilted but instead stand tall and rejuvenated, although
still battered from the power of the storm. The grass is still brown, but no longer
crunches under foot, instead squelching as though walking through slush. Grass
and brown leaves stick to my feet like leeches, impossible to remove. Even though
the rain has stopped, my t-shirt becomes damp from the water droplets running off
the palm fronds hanging over head. Looking across the driveway, steam rises from
the heat of the stones breathing sighs of relief from the cool rain. But now I feel
the stones breathe against my skin, warm and damp. Once again I start to sweat
just like before the storm, but now there is more moisture in the air that makes my
skin stick like glue, now I’m wishing that it had never rained.
r
100
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
A Technological Dorian Gray
Anita Sheridan
There was a bat that haunted my life for months. I saw it every day, as I drove
to school, its wings stretched taut between the cables of a power line. It didn’t
look peaceful in death, or horrified, or surprised. Just dead. Every day, as I drove
through the streets of Parap, I saw that bat. Every day, I looked up from the bitumen
of Gregory Street, and stared, paying no attention to passing traffic. I always
wondered if it was decaying, as from below, it seemed immutable. I wondered if I
could smell the rot, if I climbed the power pole for a closer look.
I never remembered these thoughts until the next day, when driving to school,
I’d notice again the tensioned parchment of its wings and tanned leather of its
belly. I’d think “What a hopeless predicament”. Destined to be baked onto those
wires for eternity, slowly losing pieces to passing storms. Someone should go up
there with an egg flip and scrape it off, as obviously no one had remembered to
grease the pan before applying heat.
Stopping off each day to look at that bat was one of the least sensible things I
could do. For a start, the bat had slipped off the mortal coil and onto a power
conductor at the top of a steep hill. From that point the road degenerates into zig
zagging traffic islands. I believe the intention was to force people to reduce speed,
but to a group of students they represented an irresistible obstacle course. What I
mean is, going seventy in a forty zone, down a hill, while staring at the sky is not
the best of health plans. The second reason I should not have been contemplating
where all good bats go when they die was school. With exams coming up, things
like Differential Calculus, Creb Cycles, Stoichiometry and King Lear were
supposed to be the most important things in my life.
However, the most important reason not to let my mind drift was an already
consuming detachment from reality. When I looked at my bat, I saw flight and
could feel the freedom. This, coupled with the feeling of speeding recklessly down
a hill provided the overwhelming urge to let go of the steering wheel, put my foot
on the accelerator, and see what would happen. I was sure that one day I’d simply
forget where I was and let go.
At the beginning of the year I was so happy to get the little car I sped in. Now
it seemed of the least importance. Everything else was disintegrating. The only
times I felt happy was driving so fast there was no time to think, or while staring
at my bat. For Little Batty mirrored my own decay throughout Year 12.
How does one best survive Year 12 ? Pretend it isn’t happening, of course.
There comes a point when you must spit expectations back into the faces of loved
ones. There is a buckling point where failure and destruction seem preferable to
more work. I didn’t want a life that could never live up to my “outstanding
capabilities”, so I locked that life out. It cowered outside the door of my darkened
room, incapable of penetrating my “dirge music”. Meanwhile every sane person I
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
101
knew was stuffing their heads with knowledge they would never need, on topics
that didn’t interest them.
I sat alone, tormented by the incessant itch of discontent, aching for things I
couldn’t have. I dreamed of escape from the voices yelling at me. Who wants to
grow up and be responsible? Yet who wants to be that forty year old woman found
at every workplace who still lives with her parents and speaks only to the vending
machine when it eats her change? After a good hard think, the only thing I found
that I actually liked about life was going to bed. Most people, upon coming to this
conclusion might dream up some radical life changes. But I don’t like change, so
I decided on the opposite, with a little help from a familiar bat.
Being stuck between two untenable positions can cause the most incredible
reactions. There comes a time when the mind can’t keep skipping between
impossible options and simply gives up, sits down and shuts up shop. However
instead of being paralysed by indecision, I reached for the magic of the paint
brush. I wanted nothing but to paint that bat, pin him to canvas in all his immutable
glory.
It took weeks of furious, late night painting to complete my masterwork in
grotesquery. I should count myself lucky I was not working with real paint, as I’m
sure the smell of turps, and patches of putrid green would have alerted Mummy
and Daddy to my little game. Instead, I worked in the virtual world. Mouse and
pixels, moulded my masterpiece: pen tablet, and pirated Photoshop the
paraphernalia of perdition. When the airconditioner broke and sprayed water all
over the room I worked on relentlessly. I was determined to perfect my creation. I
worked from memory, but each stroke of colour, each mouse movement, every
laborious layer added was planned with care. I worked from the moment my school
bag hit the floor, until I fell asleep from exhaustion.
During school hours I’d sneak away to look at my bat. Once home I could
make any necessary changes on my screen, obliterating any mistakes from the day
before. Yet there were so many. Could my eyesight be so bad ? I began to believe
myself mad until I recognised my false assumption. I wasn’t painting something
constant. My bat was slowly decomposing, but I couldn’t get close enough to tell
how quickly. I settled on sitting at the base of the tower with binoculars and my
laptop, tracing the changes to the stiff / trauma victim. Yet as the image neared
perfection ol’ batty boy slowed down on his race to putrification. Each day I needed
to make fewer changes, until the desiccated animal on the power line, and the one
on the screen merged. In a natural progression, Time began to eat my facsimile
instead, and as He ignored the real corpse, so He ignored me.
Now comes the strange part. Time stopped, but no one else noticed. If you were
there at the time, don’t worry. It took me a while to notice as well, and as you will
see, you probably have an excuse not to remember. Now, I’m not saying anything
really melodramatic happened, like the clocks stopping, or people freezing in the
middle of the street. Far from it. Life went on perfectly normally. Nothing changed,
including the week. The damn thing lasted for three months before I got tired of it.
102
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
The first thing that tipped me off was that the date didn’t seem to be changing.
Nor did the weather, which was brought home to me by the repairman’s failure to
arrive. At the beginning of the week, he said he was backed up till Monday but
could probably make it some time that afternoon. And once again at the beginning
of the week, he said he was backed up till Monday but could probably make it
some time that afternoon. Do you see my problem. I kept checking the date he
said he’d come on the calendar but the day just never arrived. Every time I looked,
it was the beginning of the week again. It was like pedantically waiting
for tomorrow.
I immediately recognised two distinct improvements this provided me. The
first was that the exams I had been whole-heartedly ignoring were no longer hurtling
towards me like the proverbial freight train. The second was that my highly
deranged teacher, the only person who’s ever tempted me to utter the words “arch
enemy”, was out of the state on a school trip. I would only be abused by fellow
students now. My life was complete.
For the first three weeks, I was as happy as I had been in a long time. Without
the spectre of unending schoolwork to deal with, I could get down to some seriously
obsessive behaviour. I stopped going to classes, and frequented the library. The
reason for this? It was the only place I could wag where there was still
airconditioning. That and after five years at the school the librarians always seemed
to believe I was supposed to be there. The joys of being a good little girl. I was
also getting slightly sick of all the people around me. They repeated similar
conversations constantly and I got bored. The more I withdrew the more no one
missed me, so I went off in a huff and hid from them to see if anyone would come
and find me. Needless to say no one did.
I spent a lot of time getting more and more twisted in upon myself. I could
hardly talk to anyone about my problems. Who’d believe me that time had stopped
and I was getting slightly bored. If I were a better writer, here is where I’d insert a
sequence showing me sinking into the abyss of my own idiocy and complacency.
I’m sure there are cinematic devices that could show just how detached from reality
I was. Instead I’m going to do the narrative thing, and skip forward without warning
to the tenth week. By this time I was being such a bitch to people it could not be
ignored for a day, let alone the week it took for people to be reset to factory
conditions and forget. I couldn’t quite remember what I was going to school for,
so I stopped. No more walking those hospital pink halls. No chance of failure if I
give up now.
My friends and parents looked like paper cut outs. I didn’t care what happened
to them. Was anyone in this weird wide week real anyway? Surely nothing I could
do could hurt them now. So I ignored them, retired to my room, and shut out the
world. No words crossed my lips for days on end, as I filled page after page with
the disturbing creatures that crawl through my mind.
For the last three week, around Thursday, my parents would be informed I had
attended no classes, submitted no assignments and kissed no teachers’ shining
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
103
arses. They would berate me, yelling as loud as possible through my locked door.
I would not deign to respond. They’d have forgotten again on Monday, and I just
pushed the argument out of my mind till it had gone from theirs. Yet every week,
their worry started sooner, their nagging grew louder and their intrusion into my
world more complete. It was as if some of the feeling, but not the knowledge of
the week before was creeping into them. Finally they gave up trying to yell through
wood, and simply removed the door.
Well I couldn’t keep ignoring them. There was nowhere left to hide. And they
wanted to have a Talk about my Problems. I did not. But Time had trapped me. So
I stayed in the room without a door, and stuck cotton wool in my ears when my
parents watched me, standing together in the doorway as if they could find solace
in numbers. I didn’t know what to do, but decided I could stick it out till 12 am
Sunday when the door would reappear. However, come 12.01AM Monday morning,
I discovered that major physical damage doesn’t disappear.
We’ve had the obligatory teen angst so now we get on to the Suicidal Dream.
When backed into a corner, what does the normal teenager do? Destroy themselves
in any way possible: drunk driving, large quantities of illegal substances, hacking
themselves up with scissors. But I unfortunately, discovered that while I had been
furtively sneaking out of my room for food, all sharp objects had been removed.
So I did what any other normal person would do. Went on a killing rampage armed
with a paperclip. It seemed like such a good idea at the time....
The scene is 12.32 AM Monday morning, in my parents’ bedroom. I entered,
holding paperclip at arms length, and proceeded to yell and scream about the
invasion of my privacy. My parents mumbled congratulations about finally getting
a response. I waved the paperclip a bit and threatened to “kill them, kill them all”
with that little piece of twisted metal. The saddest thing was, I hadn’t even thought
to straighten it, which, to this day is the only way I can imagine a paperclip being
a danger to anything but paper people. Once I’d finished ranting some two hours
later, I was calmed, led out of the room amid worried glances, and murmurs about
making some necessary phone calls in the morning.
I pretended to go to sleep, but instead listened at the top of the stairs as they
decided what to do with me. Or rather, where to commit me. And it was only
Wednesday. They’d only had three days of my behaviour in conscious memory to
convince them I was completely insane. They were going to ‘Take me to See
someone” on Friday. I cursed them that they hadn’t had to wait till Monday for an
appointment, by which time they would have forgotten. But I was no longer even
sure if that would work, because it hadn’t worked on the door. Small events seemed
to be leaking from week to week, in a way they hadn’t done when the week had
started. I decided to check out the bats, to ensure nothing untoward had happened
to either of them.
First, I decided to check out the “real” bat. I grabbed a torch, and snuck outside,
using the back way to avoid my distraught parents. The bat was truly unchanged.
Entirely as it was on the day I completed its twin. I drove home quickly to check
104
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
the batty image on my screen. I had done this often in the first weeks, but as I saw
the bat change, and become more and more putrid, an image so realistic I could
almost smell it, I began to deny this daily pleasure. I hadn’t checked it in over a
month. What was on the screen was hideous. It was not just a hopelessly decayed
and partly skeletal bat covered in clouds of flies and emerging maggots. It was an
evil partially decayed bat, which is much, much worse.
Every wrong I dreamed of committing had occurred to the bat. It had bruises
and scrapes from fights. It had numerous deep cuts, inflicted with the missing
sharp objects. In fact it looked like it had been hit by a bedroom door. Worst of all,
it had been stabbed by an unfurled paperclip. I was sick to my stomach at
the sight.
To my fevered imagination, it seemed the evil events had sprung from the bat,
and been inflicted on me, rather than being imagined by me and imposed on the
bat. I knew I had to be rid of it. The most sensible thing to do would be to use the
erase function on the program, or dump the picture in the trash. Instead I threw the
entire computer out of a second storey building, into an early build-up drizzle.
There is something intensely satisfying in the noise of a doomed computer hitting
the ground, and splitting into a thousand components. I’m told it’s called computer
rage. If you want to try it yourself, I suggest you use the clapped out piece of shit
you have sitting in the spare room that has been replaced by at least two newer
models. Don’t use your new laptop. I can’t even say that it had seemed like a good
idea at the time. It was a momentary lapse of sanity, the like of which people plead
in murder trials. It probably saved both life and sanity though. I don’t know if
simply trashing the image would have destroyed the power of the bat enough for
me to escape from its demonic grip.
The next day was a new day. Not a particularly good day, but a new day. No one
seemed to remember much at all of what had happened in the week before last
week. They just seemed slightly dazed. My parents couldn’t work out where the
damage to the house had come from, and assumed we’d been burgled, which also
explained the computer. But this is not a copout ending, where everything
miraculously went back to normal. This is a copout ending where I state that I
have grown and changed into a better person. I have learnt from my experiences.
I am no longer mad, lonely and confused and dreaming of leaving Darwin. I’m
now mad lonely and confused while living in Canberra.
We don’t get everything we want.
r
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
105
The Long Night
Arran Dengate
A philosopher sat in a café, nursing a lone cup of coffee into the long hours of
the night. He sipped occasionally from the cup, and let his mind wander. The
merchant gave him the scornful glare that he usually reserved for people
asking directions.
“Life is like a beach,” the philosopher said, staring into the dregs of his coffee.
“The tides come and go, and time moves on; everything changes, but we can
always see the patterns. There are always patterns.” He drew a handful of sugar
from a shaker, and scattered the grains over the tabletop.
“I hope you’re going to eat that,” the merchant said, glancing around the empty
café. “Or pay for it, at least.”
“Life as a beach,” the philosopher mused, ignoring this. “An apt description of
life.” He leaned forward, and let out his breath, watching the tiny grains skitter
across the wood. “We keep patterns, more than we know. But is every grain the
same, or are they all different, in tiny ways that we cannot see? Is free choice an
illusion? Are we all moved the same way by the tides of time?”
The merchant sighed. “Very philosophical, but everyone is different. You’ve
had one cup of coffee in the last four hours. If everyone was like you, I’d be out of
business.”
“Good point.”
“You’re quite possibly the worst customer I’ve ever seen. I’m thinking about
selling you that table, since you manage to rent it every night for a miserable cup
of coffee. A cheap cup, at that. Café latte.”
The philosopher closed his eyes wearily. “Will it matter in five years’ time?”
The merchant took a seat opposite the philosopher. “Perhaps not,” he conceded.
“But then again, what does? If you insist on taking the long view, nothing matters.”
For the first time, the philosopher glanced up, and met his gaze. “Oh?”
“The only pattern that I see is decay,” the merchant said. “Have you ever been
to the fair, philosopher?”
The philosopher shook his head. “Never.”
“At first, it’s a beautiful place. Full of light and sound and motion; you can
glance around once and see a hundred marvels, from stage magic to eating fire.
Everyone’s laughing, enjoying themselves, losing themselves in the intensity of
the little world that the fair creates.”
“I think I may be missing the point,” the philosopher said.
The merchant wasn’t listening. “I returned the next day. The people were gone,
and I did not wonder why. In daylight, I could see everything as it truly was; the
colours were just as gaudy as they had been, but I could see the peeling paint, the
cracks in the walls, the tacky reality behind the glowing lights. The people were
106
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
old and ugly and sad; there was no magic left in the place. Just the rubbish scattered
over the weedy grass, and the terrible silence.”
The merchant sighed, and his breath pushed the sugar further along the table; it
spread out, leaving glimpses of the wood beneath. A few grains fell to the floor.
“That is the only pattern in life. Return to a place you once loved, and you will
see it for yourself; your friends will be gone or changed, and everything will have
lost what you saw in it. You will tell yourself that your memories have betrayed
you, but it is not true. Memory preserves those happier times, as it should. Memory
also keeps them behind a barrier of time, like an exhibit in a glass case. You cannot
touch those happier times. Why? It is life that moves on, life that fades, like an old
photograph left in the sun.”
The philosopher considered this. “That’s quite depressing.”
The merchant simply nodded.
“If the past doesn’t matter, is there anything that makes life worth living? The
promise of an afterlife, perhaps? Material wealth? True love?”
There was a long, thoughtful silence.
“Cappuccino,” the merchant said finally. “Properly made, of course.”
“In that case, I think I’ll have another coffee.”
“You’re ordering a second cup?” The merchant grinned. “I take it all back.
There is magic in the world! Do you want anything else? A croissant, perhaps?”
“Is it that time already?”
Dawn was shining over the rooftops, illuminating the sleeping city with a soft,
cold light. There were no illusions in that light, but perhaps there was beauty. The
philosopher stared at all this, and pondered the significance. Then the merchant
brought breakfast, and the two of them talked, as the sun rose over the city, and the
first of the early risers passed them on their way to work. When it was time to go,
the philosopher went through his pockets, but the merchant just shook his head.
“Will it matter in fifty years?”
The two became friends, of a sort. They lived long, happy lives, grew old, and
died. Nobody remembers who they were, or whether they enjoyed life. Nobody
remembers their names.
Does it matter?
r
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Winners and Finalists
Arafura Short Story Award
Winner
The Tempest (or walking off Progress Drive) by Karen Manton
Finalists
The Memory Trap by Jennifer White
Daddypaddy by Robin Hardiman
Punching Bag by Marian Devitt
The Freedom Dress by Marian Devitt
Magic Words by Ngaire Caruso
First Lady by Andrew McMillan
3 Tales from 2 Points of a Compass by Karen Manton
Out of the Blue by Rosemary Sullivan
Red Earth Poetry Award
Winner
No Longer by Eva Rainow
Finalists
Greek Ducks Assert Their Independence by Marian Devitt
The Taxidermist by Carmel Williams
Throwing Children by Judith Steele
My Brother by Meg Mooney
Desert Dog by Deborah Mary Clarke
Northern Territory University Essay Award
Winner
More Firmer – Less Terror! by Jane Clancy
Finalists
Signals from the Other by Michael Whitting
Gender Strategies for the Employment of Women in Non-Traditional
Occupations in the Oil and Gas Industry by Jennifer Haydon
107
108
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers’ Award
Winner
Street Dreams by Ameina Brunker
Finalists
My Grandfather Jakamarra by Kingsley Jakamarra Walker
Learning About Country by Jane Christophersen
Kath Manzie Youth Literary Award
Winner
A Technological Dorian Gray by Anita Sheridan
Finalists
Could Have Happened to Any One by Jacinta Thorbjornsen
The Myth of Mountain Healing by Kelly-Lee Hickey
The Storm by Fionnuala Denniss
The Long Night by Arran Dengate
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
109
About the Writers
AMEINA BRUNKER is completing Year 12 at Palmerston High.
NGAIRE CARUSO is a doctor working at Royal Darwin Hospital. She hasn’t
written a story since high school, but thought it was about time she “gave it a go”.
JANE CHRISTOPHERSEN visits schools and talks about bush tucker, and how
she once lived compared to living in the city.
JANE CLANCY grew up in Darwin and was educated at a number of schools.
She has spent many years teaching in schools across the Territory and is passionate
about local oral history.
DEBORAH MARY CLARKE arrived in Alice in August 2002 from Sydney.
Shr is a multi-disciplinary artist who currently has an exhibition of digital
photographs showing at Araluen.
ARRAN DENGATE of Parap is currently completing year 12 at Casuarina Senior
College in Darwin. He is 17 years old and was born in Wagga Wagga.
FIONNUALA DENNISS lives in Howard Springs and is a Casuarina Senior
College Stage 2 student.
MARIAN DEVITT lives and works in Arnhem Land. She writes poetry, prose
and for performances.
Born in Geelong, ROBIN HARDIMAN lived for ten years in Europe and America.
Returning in 1972, he worked as a sculptor, moving to NT in 1992. He now lives
in Tennant Creek and is employed in the NT Public Service.
JENNIFER HAYDON is currently undertaking a Masters of Community
Development and Management degree at NTU. She works full time and writes
poetry, prose and essays.
KELLY-LEE HICKEY of Nightcliff is a local writer/performer
KINGSLEY JAKAMARRA WALKER is a Walpiri man from Yuendumu.
KAREN MANTON was born in 1967. She worked in Melbourne for years, with
a few escapes overseas, before making her way north. She came to Darwin for one
day five years ago, and never left.
ANDREW MCMILLAN is a Darwin-based writer.
MEG MOONEY has lived in Central Australia for 16 years and often writes
about the people and landscape. In the last few years, Meg has had poems published
in Landmark, Northern Perspectives, Northerly, Overland and Thylazine
110
Dymocks NT Literary Awards 2003
EVA RAINOW of Alice Springs was a migrant child and is now a grandmother.
She says writing transforms her lead to a “more goldish lead”.
ANITA SHERIDAN of Stuart Park grew up on a banana farm on the Adelaide
River and has lived in the Territory since she was three. She has been writing for
as long as she can remember, and is currently completing a degree in Cultural
Heritage Management.
JUDITH STEELE of Nightcliff has had poetry published in journals and in book
form, as co-author of Fighting Monsters. She broke into prose this year in the new
multi-lingual Us Journal Gobshite Quarterly.
ROSEMARY SULLIVAN is a journalist, teacher and stirrer who accidentally
had twins and has survived.
JACINTA THORBJORNSEN of Berry Springs is currently studying year 12
through the Northern Territory Open Education Centre. Her hobbies include writing
and music.
CARMEL WILLIAMS is an Alice Springs poet, who has been scribbling for
fifteen years. She has had several poems appear in literary magazines and on radio.
MICHAEL WHITTING is a teacher currently working with remote schools in
the general Katherine region. He has a mango farm 15 minutes outside Katherine.
JENNIFER WHITE has had work published nationally and internationally. She
was the recipient of a grant from the Australia Council in 1998, and in 2000 she
was awarded a mentorship by the NT Writers Centre.