Songs of the Murray Mallee.

Wagga and His Black Cat.

#2 ..A New Homeland.

They rolled across the flatlands of the Murray River plains like an unstoppable force of nature..

They rolled with tenacious persistence,

They then forged a new Silesia.

They then forged a new Posen.

They then forged a new homeland.

From the Vistula River valleys they came,

From those fertile river flats and valleys,

From The Oder River they came,

From those snow-clad hills and mountains.

Where myths and eagles flew,

Where Roman legions once fought,

Took their dreams from their own land.

To this wild and strange country,

To this strange and distance place.

Where other dreamtime and eagles fly,

Where the indigenous people danced.

*

Wagga would discuss things with his companion cat; Satan…of course, he never expected Satan to reply nor converse back to him in any cat language he, Wagga could understand, other than Satan’s uaual plaintive cries, growls or purring..so instead, he, Wagga would supply both the point and reason of conversation and then supply the answer best suited to what he would expect Satan to reply..and, instinctively knowing the intricate thoughts of Satan, he reckoned to be pretty accurate as to what the cat was thinking.

“What do you make of this family in the rowboat, Satan?”…Wagga ruminated as he passed a fresh-cooked piece of fish to his cat.. “You don’t know?….What?…yes, I agree..and I don’t think they do either..they are not very used to rowing a boat on the river.”

Wagga remained silent for a while as he ate his fish dinner near the campfire on the banks of the river..” I reckon tomorrow I’ll introduce myself and give them a few tips…they got two kiddies with them and I’d hate to see them come to grief”….”What’s that…none of my concern?..No, I ‘spose not, but there they are and here I am, so it’s no bother to me…and I do like a bit of company now and then.”…”Yes..I know I got you..no need for the growl..I wasn’t ignoring you, I was just sayin’ I like to chat to others once in a while.”

“Did you see the wife jump when I told her that spot where they were going to camp for the night was haunted…she’s a superstitious one, she is..Irish, I’d say by her accent…and well and good too, because this is just the night for that young lady’s ghost to come to the river bank..”…”No, I expect no ghost could ever scare you, Satan…YOU own the night, you do!” and he gave his cat a finger rub behind its ear.

Wagga then went silent as he kept tucking into his dinner..Satan hewed away silently at his share of the fish and the night closed in on the river.

*

Sang their own songs to a new land,

New life gifted from their own God,

God of one people, one faith, one fortune.

So they were told by their pastors,

So were foretold by their gospels,

In the faith their version of religion,

Twisted, shaped to fit their character,

Shaped also to fit their culture,

And also to fit their nature.

No deviation would be allowed,

No forgiveness those who fell from grace.

No forgiveness for not pulling their weight.

A weight owed both community and Pastor.

Pastor’s words were the words of God,

Words of their God were to be obeyed.

Churches were there quickly built,

Churches were there proficiently built,

On that land that still held such scent,

Scent of wild animals so hunted,

Hunted and held and so respected,

Hunted by the indigenous peoples

Totems of the indigenous peoples,

Held sacred by the indigenous peoples,

Indigenous peoples who were driven away,

Driven away at gun-point,

Driven from their hunting grounds,

Driven from their living lands,

Driven from their ceremonial grounds,

Alongside cool stream and river,

Along those deep hills and valleys,

Driven from their own particular “churches”.

*

“How many canoe trees have you counted now?” Wagga called across the narrow stretch of water to the oldest child in the back of the other rowboat.

“Twenty two.” the child called back..then the child asked Wagga..”Why do you row facing the front?”…”Because I like to see where I am going.” Wagga replied…then he asked the parents..”Where did you get the boat?”….”We swapped our family tent and some chattels for it at the “Susso” camp”…the father replied.

All the while this back and forth chatter was going on, the two boats travelled parallel to eachother as they rowed upstream..

“Where are you headed?” Wagga asked..”To the Riverland…to try to get work.” The father answered. “Do you mind me tagging along for a bit?” Wagga asked..” I’ll show you a good, quick way to cook river food…the native way.”

“You’re welcome…be good for some company…the river can get lonely, can’t it?”

“I’m never lonely on the river”..Wagga said..”The river has a kind of voice, I think…I feel it speaks to me..and I can feel it breathe….and I also have Satan to keep me company.”…But I will only go as far as the first Riverland town as I am not that welcome further up the river”.

“And why is that” the father asked “Have you murdered someone?” and he laughed. Wagga went quiet and then began to sing, his strong voice echoing off the sheer heights of the river cliffs…

“Oh I once kissed-a Blocker’s-daugh-ter,

She said-‘twasn’t something-I oughta,

So then when-I kissed her-again,

She asked me-to be-her man..

Oh never presume on a Blocker’s daughter,

It’s not something a man of my skin oughter,

For every Murray, Blocker’s daughter,

Has an armed, keen-eyed watching father.

So I had-to make-a decision,

My life-or the kissing-maiden,

Now that-pretty kissing-maiden,

Is but a regret-of what-I’m missing.

So I no more presume on a Blocker’s daughter,

It’s not thing a man of my skin oughter,

For every Riverland Blocker’s daughter,

Has an armed, dead-shot, watching father.”

And Wagga laughed so loud that his rollicking voice rolled around and over the cliffs and washed over the surface of the river and the family in the other boat wondered on this strange man, so tall and straight despite his apparent years and with a thick, black beard and long, thick locks of hair…and there was his pitch-black cat..; Satan..

*

The settlers had arrived in numbers,

Didn’t understand the indigenous peoples,

Forced themselves from their own lands,

Forced at gunpoint from their Homeland.

Kaiser’s army breaking up the towns,

All the weavers and crafts people,

All the tradesmen and craft people,

Despised also for their culture,

Despised also for their nature,

Farmlands enclosed by cruel governance,

Work-skills torn from their hands,

Forced to re-make their religion,

Forced to re-learn another language,

Forced to change their family names,

Forced at gun-point to flee their country.

So they come far away a sailing,

Far away sailing to this new country.

Far away fearful to this strange country,

With their folk their clatter and cluster.

A desperate people with nothing to lose,

A determined people with nothing to lose.

To create a new home from memory lost.

So the English governors of the day,

Knowing their plight,

Knowing their flight,

Knowing they had no rights,

Used them to open out that wild country,

East of the Ranges, West of the river,

Open out those wild hunting grounds,

Open out those wild indigenous lands,

Used them to push deep into, force unto,

Confront the wild indigenous peoples.

Confront the original owners of the land,

Force confrontation, force the hand,

To “Justify” retaliation.

To “Justify” indignation.

To “Justify” brutal militia assignation,

By the governors of this new nation.

An corps of criminals,

A speculation of prospectors,

A fascist corporate state,

With no regular military,

No sober police force, only delinquents.

Seeking any excuse to break,

The agreement of The Letters Patent.

The Letters Patent that gave right,

That granted indigenous people’s rights,

From the King it granted those rights,

From Parliament it granted those rights.

A signed, sealed agreement for their rights,

Directed precisely to the Governors,

A betrayal then of King and Parliament,

By the Governors of the State.

“Governors”..Ha!..better called lazzeroni!

Betrayed!…..

*

Wagga edged the clay-encased callop out of the coals of the campfire…He and the father had that day raided one of the set-lines across the river and taken a medium sized callop from the hook and prepared it for the night’s meal…He did so by covering the raw fish entirely with clay thickly, and then placed it into the red-hot coals of the fire..

“Here..you see..when you break away the baked clay, the scales and all comes away with it…no need to even clean it as the fire and the baked clay does it all for you..it works just as well with any birds..the feathers and all come away with the baked clay”..and Wagga laid the two halves onto a large, flat stone and the family tucked into the food.

Later, while the billy of tea was being prepared, Wagga said he would tell them a yarn about the owner of Portee Station..so the whole family and Wagga gathered around the campfire of glowing coals and every now and then a stick was thrown on to keep a steady flame burning on the bed of coals.

“He was a dead-shot with a gun, y’know…every time..then one day out of the blue, he stopped shooting…anything…locked the gun away and refused to shoot any more..”He’s lost his eye!” some would say…”He’s got the shakes in his hand.” said another..But no..it was deeper than that an’ he told me one day.”

Wagga nudged the coals in the fire so a shiver of sparks shot up into the night air, dancing like firey dew-drops on a wire…

“We were here like we are now..not exactly HERE..but up the river a ways, near The Washpool, but talking around the fire like we are now, an’ he told me of his dilemma.”

“He told me; ‘One morning the missus says that Uncle Charlie and his family is coming up for the weekend and would I go shoot a couple of wild ducks down by the river so as to have a nice roast come Sunday. They always said that: “George, go shoot a couple of ducks…George, go shoot some bunnies for Christmas… …’cause I was a good shot, you see.”

“I’m down near ‘Westies Billabong’ there at seven in the morning and my breath’s steaming.. I’d spotted a couple of ducks by the reeds there so I got into a crouch…and was working my way bent-backed ’round the billabong real quiet when suddenly all hell breaks loose…and these two cockys come twisting and screeching in the air above me…must’ve had their nest in a hole in a tree there and saw me as a threat. Any-road, they were making a hell of a racket so it scared the ducks who flew off, which meant I’d have to go walking further up along the river to find some more..and I was that angry with those bloody birds that when one came swooping and diving then twisted side-on to me…just above, I quickly just swung the shotgun in its’ general direction just to scare them away and let fly…boom! ”

“Well, I hit it and it fell to ground over near a red gum and it lay twisting on the grass so I started walking casually over to it all the while pushing another cartridge into the breech of the shotgun…”But as I came nearer, suddenly..I hear a voice…call out ;

“Poor cocky.”

“What’s that!”  I called…again I hear it…

“Poor cocky..poor cocky..”.

“Who’s there!” I called…turning around to see who it was…I thought someone was having me on.. but there was no-one there, nothing but the screeching of that cocky’s mate weaving and diving madly in the air above, around the branches of the gums…Then again, that same voice calling weakly and I turned to the direction of the sound and there it was, on the ground in front of me, the cocky  I had shot, calling….’poor cocky’ it was saying, ‘poor cocky, poor cocky’ over and over till it’s voice faded..It dawned on me that it must have been someone’s pet bird that had escaped and gone back to the wild..I bent down and lay the gun on the grass, then raised the body of the bird close to look at its’ eyes to see if there was still some life left in it..but it was dead, and I stared and stared, but all I could see in that dark pool of its eye was the reflections of passing clouds overhead…and there was something about that…that killing of the bird, it threw me…maybe something to do with it gaining it’s freedom and then losing it perhaps, and I couldn’t even let a poor bloody cocky have a bit of life but I go and kill it!….Killing, killing… George kill this, George kill that and I was so sick of it, sick of the killing…” he let his arms fall to his sides wearily. “…I dunno…just…sick of the killing…so I went home, threw the gun in a locker in the corner of the shed and I haven’t shot it since…

“It was the killing, I think…I just got sick of the killing….’

*

The lands of the Ngayawung,

Betrayed!…..

The Ngawait,The Ngarrindjeri,

Betrayed!…..

The Ngarkat of the mallee region,

Each with its own beliefs and laws,

Each with its own concise language,

Each with its own concise culture.

Driven out from their homelands,

Driven at gun point from their living,

If not guns then swamped and ruined,

By the running of thousands of sheep,

Through their open hunting grounds,

Over their open living grounds,

Through their open water holes.

Tens of thousands of sheep and stock,

Ruining feed, ruining quarry, water..

Ruining the bloody lot not left a jot!

When the indigenous stood ground,

They were shot…..

They were small-poxed,

They were deliberately diseased,

They were deliberately given alcohol.

The women corrupted, prostituted.

Their whole system was betrayed,

Religion, laws, ceremonial culture,

A society guarded by exacting kinship,

Knowledge passed from the Elders,

Knowledge passed to the younger,

Exactly as is our “civilized” culture,

All this was lost in the melee.

Hunting grounds and boundaries lost,

A network of mutual respect lost,

A network of exacting ritual lost,

A network so lost and destroyed

With the coming of the speculators.

White men with their property boundaries,

With their titles of land ownership.

With their stock grazing erosion,

With their stock grazing destruction,

The end of many millennia way of life.

Of corroboree and of songlines.

It is gone,

It is gone,

It is gone.

Then……

Came the Silesian settlers who knew no better,

Who too were fighting for their lives,

Used as blunt-instruments to confront,

Used to clear-fell the vast mallee,

Clear-fell too small blocks of land to farm,

Allocated to them from far away.

“Trees don’t pay taxes” they were told,

So the taxes were there eternal,

But the forest of trees were not.

Some there will have to break,

The weak will fall, strong take all.

“Let the strong swim,

The weak may sink”.

Underestimated were the new settlers,

Determination, perseverance in measure,

Already had they been well tested,

By their own cruel German government

Had they not been harried, shot,

Chased from their own homelands.

Compelled to “Germanize” their surnames,

Their own religion, their own cultures..

By the new Republic of Germany.

That, or suffer the consequences….

So they came a sailing,

A multitude came a sailing,

With their Pastors they came,

With their gospels they came,

With their songs they came,

With the whole village, they came,

To a new land…to South Australia.

Right to the end of the century,

They came….

*

Wagga came back to the boat..”Did you hear that, Satty’…No?..well, that was Jim Carmody I was talking to…you know, the storekeeper at Nildottie..an’ he tells me there is trouble over at the Italian internment camp…one of the men, a chap named Artini, tried to escape..yes..you can be shocked, Satan..and it is rumoured he was crossing the river at a secret ford one of the Aboriginal girls told him about…and between you and me, Satty’, I know just the name of that girl….”

Wagga untied the boat from its mooring on the bank of the river and climbed in to row out into the stream..

“And if you promises to keep it a secret, I’ll tell you!”

Satan the cat slipped to move onto Wagga’s lap as he rowed..

“Oh!..all sweet and familiar now are we…?…is that your way of saying “trust me”…I’ll bet it is…and yes, I trust you….after all, you know ALL my secrets…Well, her name is Tess..and she’s almost as dark as you!…She had arranged for him to come to a certain spot on the river bank where the ford was.. you know, Satty’, Tess couldn’t be caught on that side of the river after dark because of the curfew the natives live under..and he was to wait there until Tess made a prearranged call of a cockatoo to tell him it was safe to cross..but in Artini’s impatience and fear, he mistook a cry from the bush stone curlew as Tess’s cockatoo call and went into the river..and as we of the river know, the curlew’s call is one of danger and even death…and the water was deeper and stronger just then, as the lock at Blanchetown had been opened to release water down the river..and Artini was swept off the ford midstream.”

Wagga rowed the boat out toward the deeper water so as to avoid snags along the banks.

“I tell you, Satan..while you and I say the lock is to blame, there is opinion in the native camp that it was the fault of Artini in trying to smuggle his mighty axe secretly across the river that made the river spirit angry and it was that which sent the water rushing down as punishment…any road..he drowned..and they have yet to find his body.”

Wagga rowed on in silence while he gave some thought to the situation.

“But you and I, Satan…we know where he will appear, eh?…we know where he will come to the surface..; The Washpool…where the river eddys and swirls as it slows at the river bend..it is there we will find him soon..’cause as you know, Satan…it is a fact that all drowned people eventually come to the surface of the water…they come up to catch one last sight of the sun and the wide world that has been taken from them before they disappear forever…and some of them weep and you can hear the wailing…some say it is but a curlew’s cry..but you and I know it is the lamenting wail of the drowned..Come, Satan…we must hurry to be there when he rises.”

The Sorbs……

The Wends……

Slavic peoples rich in ancestry,

Germanic peoples in nationality,

Eastern European in geography.

They came, veni.

They saw, vidi.

They conquered. Vici.

Three waves of Germanic migration,

The Eastern farmers and skilled crofters,

They brought knowledge of animal husbandry.

Then came the educated Urban Middle-class,

They brought high opera to the state.

They brought the vineyards to the state,

Then came the proletariat industrial workers,

Brought their skilled metal trades.

Privately held themselves to themselves,

Settled quietly in The Barossa Valley,

Settled on the St. Kitts, Kapunda lands.

Farmed the gibbered Steinfeld,

Farmed the hills of Truro,

Farmed the hard Murray Flats,

Farmed from Eudunda to Sedan.

Worked their tynes knife-blade thin,

On that “Break-heart country”.

Spoke their own native tongue,

English in their homes a second language.

As any families who have lost everything,

As any who had been granted second life,

They took no prisoners, social, pragmatic.

Ghettoed,

Clustered,

Protected their own.

Small hamlets scattered on the mallee,

Small hamlets sheltered under one pastor,

Families there all working together,

Families there all praying together,

Their land leased from a tyrannical master.

A fascist corporate state,

A fascist South Australian Company,

Even before the name “Fascist” was defined.

Cruel landlords keen on speculation,

Keen on grasping entrepreneurship.

Using the German pioneers as cheap labour,

To clear that land so recently stolen,

Stolen brutally from the first peoples.

Northern clans and tribes driven,

Massacred by advanced weapons,

Weapons imported without restraint,

Weapons of the American carbines,

Carbines replaced the black-powder muskets,

Muskets that needed close-quarter contact,

Close contact that at least gave a chance,

To the skilled indigenous spear throwers.

To at least give chance to fight back.

Then on it was shooting fish in a barrel.

It was all over, bar the lamenting,

New hamlets come to grow,

More children come to grow,

Hamlets come spread into towns,

Farmlands start to produce profits,

German peoples start to organize,

Civil governance, local councils,

Town bands, choir, theatre they made,

Organised around church and pastor,

Liaison with central state government.

But kept there at arm’s length,

Kept away from state intrusion,

Kept themselves to themselves,

Still suspicious of the English landlords,

Still wary of the English system.

Still leery of the hard hand,

Hard hand of the ruling class.

Ruling class that valued little,

The use of an alternative culture,

The songs of a cultural people.

Would cast adrift any such group,

Any peoples hindering their path,

Toward total capital domination.

Suspicion from both parties ruled,

Little done via civil intrusion,

Intrusion into health or education,

The Germanic clusters with own schools,

With their unpronounceable names,

With their inflexible natures.

Watched them with suspicion,

Watched warily from afar,

Left to seek their own devices,

So when disease swept the clans,

So did the central administration,

Did what they did to the indigenous peoples,

……….They left them to rot!

So these crofters drained the swamps,

So these crofters farmed the flatlands,

So they farmed the stoney flats and hilltops,

Draught horse teams and harrow,

Picking up the stones by hand,

Making piles from the back of a dray.

Farmed their lands with wood and iron,

Wood, iron and blacksmithed ploughs,

Till the tynes and shares were worn,

Worn to a slither, blunt as a gibber.

Farmed the wild, wind-blown flats,

Sang songs to the billowing clouds,

Even as their families died with the fever,

Even as their children died with diphtheria,

Or harrowing births gone wrong,

Attended only by young girls as midwife,

Too frightened by ghastly complication,

Of a childbirth gone so wrong,

To do little but weep in deep shock,

What could very well be their own fate.

They died in fires and accidents,

Too frequent too often collate,

On a statistician’s slate,

Too far from medical assistance.

Left buried in sad cemeteries

Serenaded through the fall of time

By lonely, sighing sheoaks around the perimeter of the church yard..

“Peter’s Hill”,

Under the lee of Marschall’s Hut,

Under the soil interred sixty-eight souls,

Forty two of them are children.

What can a people do with an “unholy site”,

That has taken so many of their small ones,

The count of tears becomes so high,

The count of tears becomes so intolerable,

Move away from that “unholy” place,

Move over the flat-lands of the Murray Plains,

Their names spread like Summer chaff,

Place to place,

Town to town,

Dutton,

Steinfeld,

Sandleton,

Sedan.

Driven by a fervent faith unstoppable,

Driven by a fervent courage inviolate. . .

(Nb. This is a “work in progress and may be altered or added to at any time….J.C.)