On the road again...

On the road again

Goin' places that I've never been

Seein' things that I may never see again

And I can't wait to get on the road again

This is the story of what happens when I get on the road on the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

First, my satellite phone, courtesy of Globalstar, doesn't work. Leave a message. Suddenly, while driving, it'll come into range, beep madly, I'll dial 121 to get the message, and it'll cut out before I hear it. Later I'll realise it's in range again, and hopefully I'll get the message just in time. On rare occasions, the phone is in range, it rings and I answer it. Globalstar is putting more birds in the sky, apparently. In the meantime, if you need a satellite phone, I urge you to purchase Iridium.

Second, if I am travelling alone, I spend my time listening to podcasts that I've now been able to download from my new satellite broadband connection. Great Speeches of Hhistory. The Philosopher's Zone. Free podcast novels. This American Life. Send more podcast links. Many hours are spent on the road to and from Kanpa listening to the goings on of the outside world.

If I am travelling with Yarnangu, it's the Dixie Chicks. Well, more correctly, the music on my iPod comes into it's own but after a while the passengers are asking just for the few country music songs I have (read: Dixie Chicks). After 5 hours of the same songs, I'm calling my friend Pip to ask him to send me the code for an iMusic card purchased from Woolies in Canberra and I'm buying $20 cassette tapes from roadhouses. Purchase 1: Dan Vogler - Christian country music. Purchase 2: Pitjantjatjara country music, including Waltzing Matilda in language. These are desperate times, the choice is limited, and I'm not always making the final decision. Send more cassettes.

Three, look out for camels and wild animals. Camels, so that we can keep the car in functioning order. Wild animals, so we can eat for dinner tonight. Now that Robin has bullets for his rifle, and there are difficulties storing it away from children when he's not in Warburton, our trips to communities for work are also hunting trips. I'm trying to train my eye for the distinctive glint of white, far off in the shrubs, that signals the neck feathers of a bush turkey. I've had no luck so far. Instead, the best I've been able to spot them is when they rise heavily into the air by the side of the road when disturbed.

Strangely, the bush turkeys don't always fly away, or even far away when they are disturbed (such as be vehicles or a passing bullet at speed). More often, they will bump along at a rolling gait by webbed foot, heading somewhat haphazardly for higher shrubs to shield them. Of course, this doesn't stop us from getting off the road and following them slowly in the Toyota, over spinifex and small bushes, looking out for large fallen branches that will spear the tyres and leave you with a flat and no turkey. I've also discovered that if you wound a turkey in the wings, leaving it unable to fly, it's then the responsibility of the fastest in the car to chase it and bash it over the head with a wheel jack. It hardly needs stating that I am never the chosen for this task, being normally the one behind the wheel or unable to be convinced to take off into the bushes with a wheel jack.

Once the turkey is dead, by whatever means, and retrieved, the first task is to take it's intestines out. Well, I'm not sure it's really it's intestines, whatever it is, it comes out of its bum, and is long and intestine-like. Someone will usually pluck some breast feathers off, and use those for leverage on the inside. Either that, it's the keep your hands somewhat less slimy than they would otherwise be, I'm not sure. I've just watched this bit too, as you can imagine. The turkey is then deposited into a spare garbage bag (always carry a sturdy disposable bag for just this reason), or wrapped in whatever else is to hand (a tarpaulin, perhaps), thrown in the back or on the back seat floor, and continues with us on the journey.

Luckily, or perhaps not, I've never had to deal with how a kangaroo is stored in a packed car, with the back filled to the brim with bags, blankets, and a car fridge; 3 women and a baby in the back seat; a driver, passenger and gun in the front. And no roof rack. I almost found out on my last trip to Cosmo-Newberry, as we rounded a corner and practically ran over three kangaroos on the road, having a quiet time at dusk. Despite a few attempts to get them as they bounced off, paused and retreated again, we didn't manage to down them and find out what next. Send more wild animals.

Fourthly, there are the directions. Sign language is commonly used by Yarnangu. So when I'm driving, I'm also keeping an eye out for any small signs being made by my passenger, such as a 'slow down' (palm of your hand moving down and back towards you), a bend in the road coming up (hand veering off around the bend), or a camel that I haven't seen (a finger pointing towards the direction of the camel). Because whitefellas always travel too fast on the roads (Yarnangu travel at the very safe speed of 80k, good for people not wearing seatbelts, to see the countryside, and slow down quick enough for turkey), I also keep my eye on the speedometer. If I don't, it won't be long before Debra says quietly from the back 'purin-purin' or 'purinpa', meaning steady, steady, slow down Sophie. Send more patience.

Lastly, there are the rockholes. But pointing out, naming, or stopping by rockholes isn't just that action alone. Travelling along a stretch of road for Yarnangu seems to be a completely different trip than what I might take, bouncing along, long kilometre after long kilometre. For Yarnangu, it's tracing a way past and between rockholes and different Dreaming sites. I imagine a vast map, spreading out from the road we are on, with rockholes, tjukurrpa, songs, stories, history, bush trips, and birth sites. Sometimes, Debra might start singing and if it's not a gospel tune, I imagine it must be related to where we are. Robin might point out a rockhole as we pass it, and I'll practise saying the name correctly. We might pull over, and have a look at it, seeing if it's clean, or the camels have been there recently. Some rockholes have 'spiders' over them, a welded iron construction that looks like a large skull cap, designed and made by Wanarn mob and installed by Ng Land Management Unit. The keystone of the spider is a recyled hub cap, and the spines stretching down are iron beams. Sometimes, rockholes and birthsites pass without me ever knowing. It's part of the journey, and even though we are in the same car, it's not the same journey. Send more language lessons.

Marnkurrpa

Robin leaned on the car door, having just come from the Warburton community office. They already knew the questions passing between them.

'Friday', he said.

'Marnkurrpa? (three)', she checked.

'Yuwa', he replied. Yes.

Three funerals on Friday.

It was a long week in Warburton, the second week of May. Robin was burying his niece, Debra her sister, and an old man from Patjarr was also to be buried on the same day.

When you hear about the low life expectancy among Aboriginal people, it sounds like an awful statistic. On average, an Aboriginal man can expect to live to age 60; an Aboriginal woman, age 65. But it sounds like that, statistics only. It's hard to imagine people dying regularly, routinely, at young ages.

In order to get an average that is so low, it also means that there are many deaths at much younger ages. While Mr Ward from Patjarr may have been an old man, the other two women being buried in Warburton where young. Robin's niece, 36. Debra's sister, 41. Only two years difference from the ages of my brothers and I.

Three funerals in Warburton.

It is hard to write a post like this. There are some things that are not appropriate to say. The names of the people who have passed away. The different events of the funeral itself, with the three families mourning. But there are some observations I feel comfortable making. And here they are.

Sometimes, I and others wonder why things take so long to achieve in Aboriginal communities. Engagement can be hard to achieve. People are hard to find. Only a small number might be interested, and then only for a short time. Shy and unconfident, encouragement happens in small steps.

But the week I spent helping Robin and Debra's families with their funeral pamphlets was the most engaged and participative I've experienced on the Lands, even if the events framing it were full of sorrow. Funeral pamphlets are important to people. I was sought out for assistance. Surrounded by larger numbers of family members, debates over the right names and wording and stories and pamphlet design would swirl around me. I was confidently directed in English, the story being read and re-read aloud, changes made. At times, I would suggest a different way to say something, or the types of words used when talking about the deceased. My suggestions would be carefully considered and I would be directed to make the changes or 'wanti' (leave it). My expertise was technical - correct English, a computer, a printer, inserting borders and pictures, changing colours and fonts, access to a phone, access to help to make it happen. I made changes to the pamphlets wherever I was, or wherever I was needed - at the office, a friend's house, in a tent in a sorry camp, sitting on the esky, at the Shire and in a single bedroom in the roadhouse.

I don't know for how long funeral pamphlets have been produced on the Lands, or where the idea came. When Debra's family came to me, they had a clear idea of how it must look - front page (with a photo) including name and date of birth, 'in loving memory of' pages listing names of family members, special words, life story and then the order of service. But producing this is not an easy task, especially when there are three funerals, and it is hard to know exactly how it will be run.

Much time was spent on sourcing a photo (all done without me) of Debra's sister A colleague told me that the introduction of photos onto the pamphlets only occurred a few years ago, at the funeral of a young woman who died in a particularly tragic and shocking way. If we had been able to find an electronic photo of Robin's niece, that would also have been on her pamphlet. As she had not spent much time at Warburton recently, and calls to recent staff did not elicit any photos, we chose instead to insert a picture of a church in autumn.

The pages with the names of family members told the truth of extended Aboriginal families. The numbers of names left me reeling - at least three A5 pages of names with close family members for each booklet. The names of family groups connected to the deceased also numbered over 10 for each. The interconnectedness of Ngaanyatjarra families should not have surprised me, but still I found it remarkable.

Considering that the Ngaanyatjarra kin system is different from the English system (where the child of my sister would also be my child, but my brothers' children are nieces and nephews, and similarly if I were a man, my brother's children are my own), I was interested to note the difference between the two pamphlets. Debra's family chose to put the names down according to the English kin system, however baulked when they could not write down all the names of her sister's kaparli (grandchildren). In the end, they found the perfect solution - the direct grandchildren were named, and then a separate entry put in for all the kaparli (with this being the only use of Ngaanyatjarra in the pamphlet, all the rest being in English). Other than that, the main difficulty was finding a way to properly represent the slight difference that arose because Debra's father has two wives, and therefore brothers and sisters needed to be represented in a way that showed who was the natural mother of both the deceased and her siblings. By contrast, Robin's family used the English terms, but represented family members according to Ngaanyatjarra kin system. This meant 6 sets of grandparents, and long lists of uncles, aunties, nieces and nephews.

While I didn't understand the relationships, it is not surprising that the entry for 'cousin' on both pamphlets was very long. I suspect that Debra's family used this section to also put in names that had to be represented, even if not strictly cousin by the English kin system. It was also interesting to note that a 'wrong way' marriage (for Ngaanyatjarra people have strict marriage rules related to skin groups) meant that the individuals concerned couldn't be represented in the pamphlet in their correct English kin relationship to the deceased.

The life stories of both women were sad, sweet and short. They had happy family lives, growing up in Warburton, going out bush with their family, hunting and joking with family. Sometimes they lived with family in communities further west, closer to Kalgoorlie, but moved back to Warburton. They went on excursions to Perth and Alice Springs. They got married. Debra's sister had children. They travelled around the State, sometimes coming back to Warburton for short stays. They ended up in Kalgoorlie, became unwell, and died. They would leave a empty space in the hearts of their families.

Once the pamphlets were completed, we then had to find a printer. This is harder than it looks, because printers are usually held by organisations, who usually do not condone large number of coloured booklets for 'unrelated' business being printed out from their resources. In the interests of helping people with their business, I would have used my printer, however the colour cartridges were running out and I had a technical glitch that was also wrecking the double-sided copies (which in turn destroyed the 'book fold' for the pamphlets). In the end, we used the school's printer for Robin's niece's' pamphlet, and because it didn't print double sided, we spent an hour glueing and stapling the booklet together. After the school closed, however, we had to find another printer for Debra's sister's pamphlet (along with making final edits and additions to the booklet).

In the end, at about 8.30pm on the night before the funeral, we were searching for a functional printer. A colleague loaned me her keys to the Shire building, told me the security code and her password, and wished me the best. With 5 women and one baby in tow, we proceeded to set off the security alarm, call over the Shire CEO, print an inadequate copy on a dotjet printer, make some more final edits, call over the Shire CEO again to connect to the better colour printer, spend 90 minutes printing and glueing and stapling, and then just for good measure, laminating three copies of the front page. At last, 10.30pm, we closed the Shire, reset the alarm, pocketed the pamphlets, and went to bed.

The next morning, the three family groups collected in different parts of Warburton, waiting for the caskets to arrive by plane. Family members from prison flew in, handcuffed to corrections staff. Visiting pastors read out passages of the Bible while the Ngaanyatjarra Health ambulances and a spare troopie took the caskets from the plane to the waiting tables in front of the church, and slowly the three groups walked in to the church yard, assembling for the funeral. The pastor leading the service encouraged everyone to ensure there was a 'successful funeral'. Flowers were woven through the chainwire fence. Three women sang, and the funerals started.

As the families read the pamphlets, then and later, I am sure it would not have gone unnoticed that so many of the listed names had a small marker next to them. In 8 point font and italics, the names of relatives unable to attend, many younger or similar in age to the woman being remembered that day, marked the real story of Aboriginal life in Australia today.

(dec)