My Place (28 page)

‘Did Nan ever see her mother again?'

‘Yes. I sent her back for a holiday with Howden. I said, “Take her back for a holiday, let her see her mother.” She went back by boat. She saw them and she was happy, but, by then, we'd become her family.'

‘What were her duties at Ivanhoe?'

‘Oh, housework, that sort of thing. She was always good with Granny, she'd just come quietly and take her shoes off after lunch when it was time for her to have her afternoon sleep. She was simply devoted. No white trained nurse had better experience. She grew up loving us and we were her family, there were no servants. It was just family life. She couldn't read a clock, but she knew the time better than any of us. She knew everybody's handwriting that came to the place.'

‘Why did she leave Ivanhoe?'

‘Why? The police came and took Daisy from me. She was
manpowered during the war. No one could have any home help, I wasn't allowed to have her. She was a wonderful cook. Later, she rented a little house near the Ocean Beach Hotel. I gave her quite a lot of furniture, brooms and things, that I could do without. That's how she supplied herself.'

‘Can you tell me who my mother's father might have been?'

‘No. I couldn't tell you. He must have been white, maybe a station hand. When Daisy was pregnant, I was absolutely ignorant. My husband said to me one night, “I think you'd better get up, Daisy seems to be in pain.” She slept in a room just off ours, it was his dressing-room, we turned it into a room for Daisy. She was groaning and I said, “What's up, Daisy?”. She said, “I don't know, mistress, but I think I'm going to have a baby.” I hadn't any idea. She was wearing loose dresses. I called Betty, she was about sixteen at the time. I said, “Betty, had you any idea?” “Yes, of course I had, Mum,” she said. Well, I was absolutely ignorant, so I rushed over in the car to the hospital, knowing that Nurse Hedges would be there. I told her and she said, “Look, don't wait to get permission. Go home and pack for her and get her to the midwifery hospital. They won't be able to refuse her.” So I went and packed a suitcase and took her to the hospital. The baby was born a few hours later, but who the father was, we never found out. Gladys was always a beautiful girl. She went to Parkerville, we took her there. That was a home run by the Church of England sisters, it was a charity home for the ones that had no parents, we sent Gladys there. She grew up with just as nice manners as anybody could wish. Later, when she was grown up, I said to the florist in Claremont, “Will you take this girl?” They said, “No, we wouldn't. We couldn't take a native, because you know they're forbidden.” I said, “Will you take her on trial for me, I just can't bear to think of her becoming a servant somewhere.” So they took her on trial to please me, and they kept her as one of the family. She looked like a lovely Grecian girl. She never looked back. You see, she was so well brought up by those Church of England sisters. It was only through my being an old
scholar that I was able to get her in. It was very hard to get her in.'

When Alice finished talking, I felt a little stunned. All my life, I'd been under the impression that Mum had lived with Nan at Ivanhoe. It was a shock for me to discover that she'd been placed in a children's home. Why hadn't she told us? I decided I would ask her as soon as I got back.

‘Well, it's been very interesting talking to you,' I smiled. ‘I've heard a lot about you over the years. Can I come and see you again some other time?'

‘Any time you like, dear.'

I spoke with Alice again after that, and she told me a little more about Corunna and the early days. I was pleased I'd made the trip, even though I hadn't come up with a great deal of new information.

In talking to Alice, it dawned on me how different Australian society must have been in those days. There would have been a strong English tradition amongst the upper classes. I could understand the effects these attitudes could have had on someone like Nan. She must have felt terribly out of place. At the same time, I was aware that it would be unfair of me to judge Alice's attitudes from my standpoint in the nineteen eighties.

On my return from Sydney, Mum met me at the airport. ‘What did you find out?' was her first eager question.

‘Quite a lot,' I replied. ‘I'm really glad I went. I never found out anything startling, but I think sometimes you learn more from what people don't tell you than from what they do.'

On the way home in the car, I described my trip in detail to Mum. I never mentioned her being in Parkerville Children's Home. I wasn't sure how to tackle her about that.

The following day, I left with Paul and the children to spend two weeks at Lancelin, a small fishing town north of Perth. It was the first real holiday we'd had for a long time. When I returned to Perth, I felt refreshed and ready to tackle Mum.

On my first day back, I popped round to visit Jill. Jill was living
in Subiaco, sharing a house with Helen, and was still working in Mum's florist shop. I was quietly sipping a cup of coffee when she suddenly said, ‘Oh goodness, I forgot! You don't know, do you?'

‘Know what?'

She shrugged her shoulders in a helpless kind of way. ‘It's Arthur,' she said. ‘He's dead. He died a few days ago. He went home to Mukinbudin and, apparently, he just had a heart attack and died virtually straightaway.'

I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I felt too shocked. I knew he wanted to go, but the reality of never being able to talk to him again was very painful. He was one of the few links I had with the past.

I saw Mum that afternoon. ‘You've heard about Arthur, haven't you?' she said.

‘Yeah, I heard. Did you see him before he went to Mucka?'

‘Yes.'

‘When?'

Mum looked a bit awkward. ‘The night before you came home from Sydney.'

‘Was he still in Perth then?'

‘Yes.'

‘I wish I'd seen him.'

‘He wanted to see you too.'

‘Why, what did he say?'

‘I think he came round to say goodbye. He knew he was going to die once he got to Mucka, he wanted to see us all one last time. He really wanted to see you, Sally. I was supposed to take you around the night you got home.'

‘Aw Mum, why didn't you?'

‘You looked so tired when you got off the plane, and I was worried about the baby. I knew if I did, you'd insist on going over there.'

‘Oh Mum, he might have wanted to tell me something.'

‘I don't think so, dear. I'm sorry. He knew you cared about him and you'd make sure people read his story, he knew that, so don't go upsetting yourself.'

‘Yeah, I guess so. When's the funeral?'

‘In a couple of days' time, you coming?'

‘Yeah, I'll come. I hate funerals.'

I went with my brother Bill and Mum. I couldn't feel sad for him any more. I knew he was tired of his life, and I knew he was happy. When we got home, we described the funeral to Nan. She hadn't wanted to go, she hated people looking at her. Nan had a good cry, then she said, ‘Well, I can't be too sad for him, he wanted to go. I got no brother now.' After that, she rarely mentioned him.

It was about a week after Arthur's funeral that I decided to tackle Mum about Parkerville Children's Home. She had never told any of us she'd been brought up in a home. She'd always led us to believe that she'd spent all her childhood at Ivanhoe. It wasn't that she'd actually lied about it, it was a sin of omission more than anything else.

I popped the question over afternoon tea. Mum was shocked. But before she had time to gather her wits, I said, ‘You deliberately misled us. All these years, I thought you were brought up at Ivanhoe with Judy and June. Why on earth didn't you tell us the truth?' It was yet another tactical error; if Mum hadn't been on the defensive before, she certainly was now.

‘You're making a big deal out of nothing,' she replied. ‘I spent holidays at Ivanhoe. Anyway, there's nothing to tell.'

‘Oh, come on, Mum, this is me you're talking to, not some stranger off the street! You think I can't tell when you're hiding things? I know you too well. I want you to tell me what it was like.'

‘I told you before, Sally,' she said in a very annoyed way, ‘there's nothing to tell. You're a terror for taking the bull by the horns. Who told you I was brought up in Parkerville, anyway?'

‘Alice told me. How did you think I felt, finding out like that. I was shocked.'

‘You didn't say anything to June, did you?'

‘Of course not, but it was all I could think about. You're lucky I didn't ring you up and abuse you over the phone. You're supposed to be helping me with this book and here you are, hoarding your own little secrets. And you complain about Nan.'

‘All right, all right! I'll tell you about it, one day.'

‘Now?'

‘No, not now. And you promise me you won't tell any of the others.'

‘I'll only promise that if you'll promise to spill the beans one day. I mean soon, not in ten years' time, I could be dead by then.'

It was difficult for me to decide how next to trace my family history. Nan and Mum had united. Now that Mum was feeling threatened, she suddenly found she had more in common with Nan that she'd ever imagined.

Consequently, I spent the next few months transcribing Arthur's cassettes and putting his story together. It was very important to me to finish his story. I owed him a great debt. He'd told me so much about himself and his life, and, in doing so, he'd told me something about my own heritage.

When I had completed it all, I rang Mum.

‘It's finished,” I said when she answered the phone.

‘What's finished?'

‘Arthur's story.'

‘Can I come and read it?'

‘That's what I'm ringing you for.'

My name is Arthur Corunna. I can't tell you how old I am exactly, because I don't know. A few years ago, I wrote to Alice Drake-Brockman, my father's second wife, and asked her if she knew my age. She said that I could have been born around 1893-1894. Later, her daughter Judy wrote to me and said I could have been born before that. So I guess I have to settle for around there somewhere. Anyway, I'm old, and proud of it.

The early years of my life were spent on Corunna Downs Station in the Pilbara, that's in the north of Western Australia. We called the top half of the station, where I lived, Mool-nyamoonya. The lower half, the outstation, we called Boog-gi-geemoonya. The land of my people was all round there, from the Condin River to Nullagine, right through the Kimberley.

After my people had worked for so long on the station, they were allowed to go walkabout. We would go for weeks at a time, from one station to another, visiting people that belonged to us. We always went to Hillside, that was Dr Gillespie's station. The eastern part of Western Australia, that's different. We call that Pukara. Our land was Yabara, the north.

My mother's name was Annie Padewani and my father was Alfred Howden Drake-Brockman, the white station-owner. We called him Good-da-goonya. He lived on Corunna Downs nine years before marrying his first wife, Eleanor Boddington. She had been a governess in the area. While on the station, he
shared my Aboriginal father's two wives, Annie and Ginnie.

Ginnie, or Binddiging as we called her, was a big-built woman. She was older, argumentative. She bossed my mother around. I used to cry for my mother when she was in a fight. I'd run round and grab her skirts and try and protect her from Ginnie. Ginnie only had one child by Howden, and that was my half-brother Albert.

My mother was small and pretty. She was very young when she had me. I was her first child. Then she had Lily by my Aboriginal father. Later, there was Daisy. She is my only sister who shares with me the same parents. I was a good deal older than her when they took me away to the mission, she was only a babe in arms, then. My mother was pregnant with other children, but she lost them.

My Aboriginal father was one of the headmen of our tribe. He was a leader. He got our people to work on the station and, in return, he was given a rifle, tea, tobacco and sugar. He was a well-known man, tall and powerful. Many people were scared of him. Sometimes, he would go walkabout, right down to Fremantle, then up through Leonora, Ethel Creek and back to Corunna Downs. Men were frightened of him because he was a boolyah man
*
.

My uncle and grandfather were also boolyah men. For centuries, the men in my family have been boolyah men. I remember when my grandfather was dying, he called me to him. I was only a kid. He said, ‘You know I can't use my power to heal myself. I will pass my powers into you and then I want you to heal me.' He did this, and I ran away and played, even though he was calling me. I was only a kid, I didn't understand. My grandfather died. It wasn't until years later than I began to learn just what powers he had given me.

One day, my uncle said to my mother, ‘Never worry about Jilly-yung. (That was my Aboriginal name.) Never worry about him, I will look after him when I'm dead. I will always be close to
him. He may not know I am there, I may be a bird in the tree or a lizard on the ground, but I will be close to him.' That was my Uncle Gibbya. He was married to Annie's sister.

My Uncle Gibbya was a powerful rainmaker. He didn't always live on Corunna Downs. One day when he was visiting our people, Howden said to him, ‘You can work with me on the station as long as you can make it rain.' My Uncle Gibbya said, ‘I will make it rain. Three o'clock this afternoon, it will rain.' Howden looked at the sky, it was blue and cloudless. He shook his head. Later that day, white clouds began to gather, like a mob of sheep slowly coming in. At three o'clock, it rained. My uncle got his job. He was the best rainmaker in the area.