Warrigal's Way (20 page)

“Scrum down here,” said the umpire, and by now I was
totally confused, not knowing what the hell I had done wrong.

Eddie came over. “You can't bounce in this game, mate. When you get the ball, tuck it under your arm and run like hell for the other end. You can fend, but not stiff arm, you can kick over the top, but no hand-balls. Oh, and if you get close enough you can kick for goal, but only drop kick. Okay?”

“Got'cha,” I tell him.

They got the ball again so we tried to intercept their line. I tackled this big block right around his ankles and shook the ball loose, Eddie picked it up and threw it to me, and about two hundred blokes landed on top of me, kicking and scratching with their boots. I felt like a peanut on a freeway. The umpire blew his whistle and they all got off me, and I felt as if I had sprig marks from head to toe. “Anyone been killed in this game?” I asked Eddie.

He just laughed. “Of course. Don't you know this is the game they play in heaven.” He walked back out on the wing laughing.

“Hey! When does this first bloody quarter end?” I yelled to him.

“They play two forty-minute halves. We got fifteen minutes yet,” he replied.

Christ, will I live that long, I thought. I looked up to see a bloke as wide as a Mack truck howling down at me with a couple of mates close on his hammer. I took him with the point of the shoulder just under the rib cage and the ball spilled out behind him. Eddie toed it up-field a bit then picked it up and ran, so I ran with him. All their troops were over the other side of the paddock and there were only two or three in front of us. Just before he was tackled he threw me the ball.

“Run!” I heard him yell. So I put my head down and ran. A bloke had a go at me and I fended him off, stepped
around his mate, crossed the try line and put the ball down between the posts.

I was given the kick for goal. “Place kick!” Horrie was screaming at me from the sideline. The ball went through the posts, and all the boys came over and patted me on the back. “Thank Eddie,” I said. “I just done what he told me.”

The whistle blew for half-time and Horrie was going on like I was his long-lost brother. “Bloody good show, boy, bloody good,” he said. I wondered what he was going to say when I told him I was absolutely had it. But he was alright about it, and said he would send Phil on for the second half.

In the end they beat us by about six goals, but after a hot shower and a party at the pub, I felt terrific. I played all the time I was needed, but I still didn't go the game much.

The weather got colder and colder and we decided it was time to think about heading back to Australia.

We sold the Blue Streak in Wellington, and bought our air tickets for Sydney. I tried to get a flight to Melbourne but we would have had to stay another day and we just wanted to get home.

I had no luck trying to find Mum. I asked just about every Maori we met whether they knew of any black Australians around the place, but most said no. I did think I'd struck it lucky in Hamilton. A bloke told me there was a family out on the Raglan Road. I hunted them up and found Jack, an Aboriginal bloke from Casino who was married to Milly, a Maori woman. But I didn't find any other of my own people.

26

We landed in Sydney on a cold, drizzly day, and the first thing we did was buy a car—an Austin A40—and set off for Melbourne. On the way I got to see the dog on the tucker box at Gundagai for the first time.

We found a nice flat in Brighton and I started back at Angliss' meatworks. Life was okay for a while but then things started to deteriorate.

Jenny wasn't happy. She wanted to go and stay with her parents in Gippsland, but my work was in Melbourne. Then she wanted to go back to New Zealand, and before long all we seemed to be doing was arguing. Her mother began poking her nose into our lives, telling us we shouldn't be raising Sharon in a flat in the wrong part of town and I told her to bugger off”. So now there was war on two fronts.

I got home one night and found a note from Jenny saying she was leaving me and taking Sharon with her. I rang her old man but he wouldn't tell me anything, and eventually I heard the story from the woman who lived in the upstairs flat. She told me that Jenny had met a Kiwi bloke who worked at the pub—a barman she thought—and the two of them had gone to New Zealand and taken Sharon with them.

I went to the bank and closed our accounts, both the one
here and the one in New Zealand (she missed that one). I also saw a lawyer about custody of Sharon, and he told me that it would be almost impossible to contest and the best thing I could do was get on with my life.

I gave up the flat and shifted in with a friend, Big Dennis, at his flat in St Kilda. I felt kind of empty. Don't let anyone tell you this kind of thing doesn't hurt. It does. And it hurts for years.

I didn't see or hear from Jenny and Sharon again. The thing that makes me most angry is the thought of my daughter growing up calling someone else “Dad”.

I felt I'd lost something precious twice in one lifetime.

I stayed with Dennis until the end of the season and then we decided to go up to Brisbane. I ran into Stumpy and Mick at Borthwicks and I stayed with them in their flat in Cannon Hill.

I went around to the old house in New Farm to look up Barry and Marge, but the woman who was there told me they had moved a couple of years ago and she had no idea where to.

I had a look in at the Kangaroo Point pub to see if anyone had heard anything of Mike (from my droving days). The barmaid told me she knew Mike, but hadn't seen him for years.

I met up with the boys at the Colmslie Hotel and told them I'd had no luck looking for Barry.

“Geez, young Danny must be full grown by now,” said Mick. “I wonder what sort of kid he turned out to be?”

“I reckon he'd be alright,” I said. “Bazz and Marge wouldn't let him get far out of hand.”

They both agreed.

After a month at the meatworks we all took off for Rockhampton. We stayed at the Anchor and one night when the boys headed for the bar for a drink I decided to have a look
around town. I popped my head into goodness knows how many pubs but didn't see anyone I knew until I got to the Railway Hotel. There I ran into Rossie, a black stockman I'd known when I was with Hugh. We had an old home week and a laugh over old times. Sadly, he told me Hugh had died of pneumonia in Townsville some time ago. He didn't have much news about the others, except he'd heard that Ted was in Normanton a few years back, and he thought Russell was still working out west somewhere.

Nothing much was working for me in Queensland so I headed for Darwin. I got as far as Katherine and found work and thought I'd stick around for a while at the meatworks. I didn't know then that Katherine would become my home. I was camping in the caravan park and got to know quite a few people there. Gary and Jill and Peter and Esmae became close friends.

Peter was a ringer on Mambooloo station and he got me a job there doing all sorts of things. I might be working in the market gardens among the rockmelons, cucumbers and capsicums, weeding and hoeing. Or I could be out at the mango plantation, planting trees or digging holes for the irrigation pipes. Or fencing, or butchering and breaking down the carcasses for the cookhouse. Or working in the workshops welding or making gates. Or going bush to repair the grader. Or sometimes, and not as often as I'd like, going out on the cattle.

Gary introduced me to Eric, who had ten acres on the Victoria Highway about a mile out of town. He had a caravan on the block—a thirty-foot Viscount—which he let me rent in return for doing some work for him—like giving him a hand with some power installations and putting up new buildings on his block. I went to work for Gary who had a contract with the Housing Commission doing repair work, and also worked with Gary's wife Jill cleaning Commission houses and flats.

I had a great job with the local council for six years, but had to give it up after an accident wrecked my shoulder. And I found out that the diabetes I had was getting worse. When my friend Eric died of a brain haemorrhage and then Jill died of cancer I thought it all didn't seem right somehow.

I was urged to write to Mr Tickner, the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, for a birth certificate or information to recognise I am alive after years of frustration with state government departments. Through him I was granted my passport, you have no idea how much it means to me to come off the grey line and finally be recognised as a person. I look and listen to the pollies play with our lives, the paternalism that completely rejected us from the constitution putting us on the grey line is still there. With me looking as white as any white Australian, people are not too careful what they say in front of me, and I can tell you racism is still rife and healthy in our wonderful society. So until all of us get a fair go I will keep writing and I hope to live long enough to see society change.

Well, this is my life to date. Now I'm a person, I still don't know who I am, but I will keep on searching for family.

UQP's Black Australian Writers Series continues strong its commitment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing. The Series opens up exciting opportunities in Black writing and makes this emerging literature more widely available.

This significant series testifies to the diversity of Black writing. Launched in 1990, it evolved out of the annual David Unaipon Award which attracts texts by unpublished Black authors from across the nation and is judged by well-known Black authors, Jack Davis, Mudrooroo and Jackie Huggins. The late Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal was a founding judge and series consultant. The Black Australian Writers Series is made up of the Award winners and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors.

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When eighteen-year-old Bill Dodd dived into the Maranoa River his life changed in an instant. This young larrikin had enjoyed many adventures as a stockman on a remote cattle station; now he was a quadriplegic. His boxing, running and football days were over, and he would never ride his beloved horses again.

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Highly commended in the inaugural David Unaipon Award, this personal journey is also a landmark history of political struggle and achievement in the area of human rights.

The title celebrates the favourite childhood game of authors Rosalie and Valda. This memoir tells of the sisters' childhood during the Depression in smalltown Tasmania. For the family of nine, thrift was a virtue and home-grown food and hand-made clothing a necessity. In later years, they learned of their heritage as descendants of Manalargenna, leader of the Trawlwooway people of Cape Portland in north-east Tasmania.

Winner of the 1992 Unaipon Award for unpublished Black writers, this is a thriller, a historical novel, a story of conflict and triumph. Black and white lives are swept up in an epic tale of romance, greed and murder in 19th century New South Wales.

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A story of family struggle and cultural allegiance told by Chris who is a tender witness to poverty and despair. The torment of a young boy living black in a white world is truthfully told in writing both lyrical and wise.

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Doris Pilkington's second novel tells of extraordinary courage and faith. It is based on the actual experiences of three Aboriginal girls who fled from the repressive life of Moore River Native Settlement, following along the rabbit-proof fence back to their homelands.

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Unbranded
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These droving stories by ten Murrie stockmen and women record the vital yet seldom sung contribution of Australia's Aboriginal stock workers. Entertaining and informative. Includes photographs.

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