Songs of the Murray Mallee.

The Fable of Wagga and his Black Cat, “Satan”.

#1..; Vera.

Our fable begins in the years of The Great Depression, with an enigmatic man named ‘Wagga’ whom it was rumoured came from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, and now lived in his rowing skiff and slept on the banks of The Murray River near Blanchetown in South Australia. He had no known trade but would meander up and down the river with no clear objective, catching fish and selling or exchanging them for other food or necessities as he required .

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His comings and goings would have remained unrecorded for all time, but for the observations of a young schoolgirl named Vera, the child of an old Germanic pioneer family whose Parent’s  understanding of English was as sparse as their knowledge of arithmetic and dictation. Vera would see the regular rowing up and drifting down of Wagga and his big, black cat, “Satan”, perched on the prow of Wagga’s rowboat as they passed her family farm on the banks of The Murray River. Vera, an attendee in grade three, of the local State school, was finding her homework difficult in that she could not ask for help from her unschooled parents who only used English as a second language in the home to their own Silesian Germanic language..so she started to compose letters to an imaginary “Miss Green”, to tell her of her troubles.

“Dear Miss Green”,  Vera wrote ,

“Just a few lines to tell you we are all or right and hope the same from you.

Now I am telling you about my lessons I find some very hard. And I got no one to help me much. and my parents do not have not much ide’a about them lessons..so I am want to axed them for help for them lessons. It is very hard to please both my parents who wish me to speak German in the home and my teacher who demands we only speak English in class.

Now I am closing in best of luck.

From your friend.. Vera.”

Vera found this form of confidential correspondence satisfying, so she decided to write to this “Miss Green” on a regular basis, telling her of the adventures, real or imaginary of Wagga and his black cat, Satan as they wandered up and down the river. Of course, if we are to follow Vera’s written tales, we will do justice to her young years inexperience with grammar and use a more exacting form when relaying those stories.

Songs of the Murray Mallee.

As the sunrise upon the morning,

So a sunrise on the mallee dawning,

Upon The Mallee brightly shining,

We hear crow announce its calling,

Calling, calling, rousting crrrarking!

Carrakkkk, carrrarking treetop calling,

The crow call to its family warning.

Hear the butcher bird chortle,

Hear the honeyeater sparkle,

The magpie with the wagtail squabble,

Galahs and the cockatoos scraying

The kangaroo with joey in the stubble.

Wombat and possum trumble.

We hear the wanton, woeful die ,

Of the bush stone curlew cry.

So we begin our story telling,

Our story of our ancestors telling

That came from afar seas a-sailing,

On The Heinrich, on The Helene,

On The August, On The Skjold,

From Hamburg Port to Port Adelaide,

That came afar with families sailing,

That came so many to a land so willing,

A land so willing tho’ crops a failing,

Walked to the lower Flinders Rangers,

With their ploughs and animals trailing

To farm in that treacherous climate,

The rain it will follow the plough

They believed.

But it didn’t.

And their farms died,

And their animals died,

And their dreams died,

And their children died there.

So were the Sorbs again driven,

As once driven from their German homeland,

As once driven by the Kaiser’s armies attacking.

The Silesian weavers and their offspring,

Came with strength and courage unfailing.

That came the Selisians and the Posens,

That came the Wends and the Sorbians

I will tell you of their stories,

Of their travail and trying stories.

I can now tell you of their stories,

Because I have long been watching,

I am the watcher always watching,

From the rim of a far horizon.

*

“Dear Miss Green.

Just a few words to tell you we are all alright and hope the same from you.

Now I am going to tell you about Wagga. He lives in his rowboat on The Murray River and he has a big, black cat called Satan. I hope he really isn’t Satan because that would be bad. No-one seems to know just where he has come from..but there are rumours..

I asked the storekeeper Mr. Carmody at Nildottie who he was and he said “ ‘Wagga’?..He is what is called a Murrumbidgee Whaler where I come from..but he could be any number of other things..Thief? Robber, Highwayman!?.. or if you want, he can be Charon the ferryman if you pay him a penny to ferry your soul across the river when you die.” And he laughed in a funny kind of way.

I will ask father about Wagga.

Now I am closing, best of luck,

Your friend, Vera.”

*

Came with them their families and friends,

Came with them their Pastors and religion,

Came with them their trades and skills,

The farriers, saddlers and horsemen skilled,

The farmers, bakers and carpenters too,

Came the music came the songs,

Came the chanting from far along.

That came them all far seas a sailing,

Came the Irish,

Came the Italians,

Came the Cornish to mine hills and valleys.

All of them come and bring their cultures,

All of them come and bring their families,

Come and come so many dialects,

All of them come, bring their cuisine,

Food so exotic and tastes of heaven,

Work as hard as their draughthorses,

Work as long as there was work willing.

Work always there for the farmland tilling.

Women bearing so many children,

Numbers woeful of diptheria infections,

Graveyards with young children filling,

Sometimes mother and in-birth child dying.

The ground awash with tears a falling.

Sheoaks around graveyards sighing,

Whispering names of dead and departed.

Only the Sheoaks now left lamenting.

Let me tell you of their story,

It will be the telling of the last story,

This epic will be their last story,

This poem will be the last of that era,

This time has gone and so far ended,

This time has so far gone and passed,

As have all those players passed,

As have all their done deeds passed,

As have their guilt and innocence passed,

Their work, building and lived lives passed,

All the farmers, their wives and children,

Gone, gone to the history past,

Gone like yesterday’s sunset past,

Gone like youth’s wild laughter past,

Like the brown leaves of Autumn fallen…

Like empty husks of Summer seeds fallen,

The summer crops pouring their seeds

Onto the Earth and onto the stone,

*

“Dear Miss Green.

Just a few words to tell you we are all alright and hope the same from you.

Now I am going to tell you some more about Wagga. I asked father and he said Wagga was a river tramp, a vagabond, who trapped fish and wild duck and sold them or exchanged them for things he needed.

Father said he rowed Mr Esau’s body in his boat across the river when he drowned in the flood last year as the ferry was out of order..He was paid to take him across or else he wouldn’t do it.. not for the money, as it was a mere penny coin, but as what he called “soul fare”..like if you give someone a cutting knife for a present, they have to pay you sixpence in a kind of exchange for it or else it will cut as bad luck”.. Wagga is very superstitious, father said. “He won’t camp on a certain part of the river up from The Big Bend as it is haunted, he says..A young woman from a riverboat wandered into the bush there and was never seen again and her spirit waits there on the riverbank for the riverboat to return to pick her up..or so Wagga says.”

I will ask mother about Wagga.

Now I am closing, best of luck,

Your friend, Vera.”

*

A heart of stone the world is become,

A new world rising of stone and cinder,

Where hope is but a one minute wonder

Where love is but a speculative opportunity.

This is why we will not survive,

This is why we will not survive,

This is why we will not survive.

Through war and plague we did thrive,

Disease and disaster we did survive,

Small tribes wandering water to water

We did survive,

We did thrive,

We were alive!

Hunting ground to hunting ground wander,

We did survive and thrive there under.

Shelter to shelter, hut to stone,

We did wander..we did thrive.

We did live..we did survive..

Alive for one primary desire,

Desire for one another’s life..

Desire for that loved one special..

Special loved for that one desire..

A certain one within the tribal clan,

A special one within the tribal group.

*

“Dear Miss Green.

Just a few words to tell you we are all alright and hope the same from you.

Now I am going to tell you some more about Wagga. I asked mother about Wagga. She was making dinner..When I said Wagga’s name she stopped what she was doing and asked; “Why child?” ..I said father said he was a tramp and Mr Carmody the storekeeper said he could be Charon the ferryman..Mother turned to face me and sat down at the kitchen table..it took a while before she said anything..”I would rather think of Wagga as like St. Christopher..Mother said..when he carried the young boy Jesus on his shoulders across the river in the story, and even when the boy became heavier and heavier and the water got deeper and deeper, and the current stronger and stronger, still he carried the young Christ safely across the deep water of the river to the other side…..I think Wagga could be counted upon to do the same”..and then mother looked sad and went all quiet.

I will ask Auntie Theresa about Wagga.

Now I am closing, best of luck,

Your friend, Vera.”

*

Within the shelter of the tribal name.

Protected by the shelter of the tribe,

The one who shared our likes and dreams,

The liking for particular fruits and seeds,

The liking for a singular woven cloth,

A place of refuge,

A place of feeling over others.

In times more conducive will grow,

Within the heart grow to love.

Within the tribe grow to love,

But can such a thing be allowed to flourish,

If not in the interest of the culture,

If not in the interest of the tribe.

What be the custom, where the culture,

If not of the interest for the tribe,

If not of the interest for the lovers.

And of the class and of the creed,

Can personal love form outside of these?

Outside of station in the culture,

Outside of position in the status.

Yet regardless if ever consummated,

Regardless of such station born,

Still will embryonic desire grow,

Still will the beginnings always show

Of that need for imagination show

Of those hidden senses and know

That the heart will hold the tender fruit

And the senses in conspiracy stored,

For those who are loved and adored.

*

“Dear Miss Green.

Just a few words to tell you we are all alright and hope the same from you.

Now I am going to tell you some more about Wagga. I asked Auntie Theresa about Wagga. “Ah yes..”our Wagga..” she said.. “Strange chap is our Wagga..I sometimes wonder if he is half Whiteman, half Aboriginal..He spends so much time with them. But then, he is his own man above all that..”

“Does he camp and cook his own food on the banks of The River?”

“Yes, child…here, sit here and I will tell you a story about Wagga. When I say half Aboriginie, it is because he lives in a camp like they do, and he cooks his food like they do..straight from the catch to the fire..he covers the fish or bird, feathers or scales and all with clay and puts in among the coals of the fire and when he opens the cooked lot, the scales or feathers comes away with the baked clay covering…But it was before you were born..when your older brother, Anthony, drowned in the river..when he was crossing on his way to the school at Nildottie one rough winters day and he fell from the boat and was lost in the wild water..It was Wagga found him downstream..and it was Wagga brought him back home to your mother..Wagga lives on the river and it is always he who finds those things lost in the river…People sometimes call him a river spirit like the Pagans believed of back in the olden times..and that black cat of his..’Satan’ ..those two are well matched..it is the most “human” cat I have ever seen..

When Wagga found your brother, he wrapped his body in his sleeping blanket and rowed back upstream to your home…Wagga always rows facing the front as he likes to see where he is going..and he covered your brother’s body there in the boat as he didn’t want to keep seeing him..I can imagine the three of them in the boat that day, Wagga found your brother caught on a snag down near Younghusband Landing..He rowed all the way back here even against wind and current, without stopping to rest even..the three of them in that boat, Satan sitting on the prow like a figurehead, Wagga facing forward, the wild wind blowing his big, black beard and that long hair away off his tragic face..rowing away and your brother, Anthony, between them wrapped in the blanket as a shroud…A month after they had the funeral, Wagga came one day and gave your mother that blanket..all clean and neatly folded..he said he couldn’t use it to sleep under as the boy’s spirit now shared it and disturbed him through the night..and he didn’t think it right to throw it away..so he gave it to your mother…”

I have seen that blanket, Miss Green..I have seen mother sometimes take it down from the top of the wardrobe and bury her face in it’s folds…I think she weeps into it.

Now I am closing, best of luck.

Your friend, Vera.”

*

These are the people my story tells,

Unknown people does my story tell,

Neither brave nor heroes be,

Neither great lovers, like in history

There are no heroes in my story,

No heroes and no Gods in this story.

No kings to steer or to control,

So let this story, this epic unfold,

This story that so needs be told,

I will make this story unfold,

For I am one of those families old,

That lived and thrived in this country,

That lived and died in this country.

That gave all they had to this country,

I AM the story of this country.

(To be continued).