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Mudrooroo was born in Narrogin in Western Australia in 1938. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia and the world and is now living in Brisbane. Mudrooroo has been active in Aboriginal cultural affairs, was a Member of the Aboriginal Arts Unit committee of the Australia Council, and a co-founder with Jack Davis of the Aboriginal Writers, Oral Literature and Dramatists Association. He piloted Aboriginal literature courses at Murdoch University, the University of Queensland, the University of the Northern Territory and Bond University. Mudrooroo is a prolific writer of poetry and prose and is best known for his novel, Wildcat Falling, and his critical work, Writing from the Fringe. Old Fellow Poems and Wildcat Falling are both available with his audio presentation. He has completed a new novel Balga Boy Jackson to be released in 2017.
Also by Mudrooroo and available in ETT Imprint
Wildcat Falling (ebook)
Doin’ Wildcat
Dalwarra
The Indigenous Literature of Australia
The Garden of Gethsemane
An Indecent Obsession (ebook)
The Master of the Ghost Dreaming
This edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2017
First published by Angus & Robertson 1991
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers:
ETT IMPRINT
PO Box R1906
Royal Exchange NSW 1225
Australia
Copyright © Mudrooroo 1991, 2017
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-6480963-8-2 (ebook)
Cover: Purrukuparli and Pima by Declan Apuatimi.
Dedicated to my sweetest ‘enemy’, Hurni
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The verses quoted throughout this novel are from ‘The Convict Maid’ (published as a broadsheet in London in 1837), and the ballad, ‘Van Diemen's Land’.
I
Once, Morning Star had shifted from its course and had drifted far from the dawn. It continued to shine, continued to be a beacon, but became not the harbinger of the morning, of the light, but a marker of the density of the night which has overtaken us. It illuminates our misery and tugs our souls far from day. Our spirits roam the realm of the ghosts – an unfriendly land where trees and plants, insects and serpents, animals and humans wither and suffer.
Now, we, the pitiful fragments of once strong families suffer on in exile. Pulled by Evening Star into the realm of ghosts, only some of us live on, kept alive by our hope that we shall escape this plane of fear and pain. All around us is the darkness of the night; all around us is an underlying silence of a land of death. Where are the crescendos of Cicada; the watching eyes of Kangaroo; the scuffling of Bandicoot? They have been swept from this land. All are gone. Only Crow, he the one close to death and corpses, remains to gloat over us – we, the ones surrounded by death. Surrounded by ghosts, worse, in the arms of ghosts we die to ourselves. And even in that death, there is no surcease. Lost is the way to the skyland. Our souls wander forlornly in the land of ghosts. Our spirits become their play things; our bodies their food, to be ripped apart, and our gnawed bones are scattered. We are in despair; we are sickening unto death; we call to be healed. Anxiously we wait for the ceremony to begin. We wait for our mapan, the Master of the Ghost Dreaming to deliver us. From him we demand release from the land of ghosts. We demand healing from our shaman, Jangamuttuk: he who is the custodian of the Ghost Dreaming; he who can sing the way of release through song ...
Thus Jangamuttuk interpreted the collective feelings of his people, as he waited for the correct moment to begin the ceremony. The feeling needed to rise just as the Hunter had to move the line of his spear towards Wombat. Now ...
The rap-rap, rap-rap of his clapsticks shattered the silence of the darkness. The sharp raps disappeared out and out, hit some obstruction and circled returning. Raprap, rap-rap. Instantly fires were kindled. Little flames flickered, grew stronger with the chant completing the square. ‘Fire, flickering, flame grows, flame grows.’ Now the square clearing was outlined by the fires. Jangamuttuk’s tribespeople stood in a solemn row.
Male and female moved next to each other. The males were naked except for the initiated men who proudly wore the incised pubic shell of their clans; the women subjected to the new Christian faith wore a long skirt, but above their waist to perfect the ceremony, they had painted in a lattice work of white lines that which signified a bodice lowcut as in formal European wear. There was even the appearance of a necklace dangling above the cleavage of the breasts. Three: white rows of dots flowed dripping down to just above the three cicatrices of womanhood, passing across the cleavage. In the dip, outlined in red ochre, but appearing dark to invisible in the light of the flames was an eye-shape. To complete their costume, they wore flowers and leafy twigs plaited into their hair and shaped like European women’s hats.
The men’s head ornamentation also signified the European. Civilisation had shorn many. Gone were the elaborate and proud hairstyles of the initiated men. Now they covered up their naked shame under woollen caps; thus replacing the reality for the symbolic. Those few newcomers who had been spared the clip-clipping of Fada’s scissors, arranged their locks into the shape of flat European hats, or piled their hair up around a piece of wood or rolled up cloth so that it might appear in the fire light to be the high helmet of a European soldier. Their body painting had been designed to signify European fashion, both civilian and military. The stripes of military jackets were painted across chests; lapels and buttons, even pockets had been painted with an attention to detail that was quite startling – that is if there were European eyes present to be startled; but for the moment there were none, and even if there had been, it was highly doubtful that the signifiers could have been read. What was the ultimate in a sign system, might still be read as primitive.
Jangamuttuk, dreamer of the ceremony, was painted in like fashion. His work was more elaborate and detailed. A hatch design of red and white encircled his neck in a symbolic collar. Below this were painted the broad lapels of a frockcoat. Four buttons of a spiral design kept the coat closed, and in the vee, the top of a waistcoat peeped out. His legs, and the legs of the male dancers, were painted white with a circular design at the knee.
Now Jangamuttuk, creator and choreographer, checked the company for flaws before the body of the ceremony began. He was not after a realist copy, after all he had no intention of aping the European, but sought for an adaptation of these alien cultural forms appropriate to his own cultural matrix. It was an exciting concept; but it was more than this. There was a ritual need for it to be done. The need for the inclusion of these elements into a ceremony with a far different purpose than mere art. He, the shaman, and purported Master of the Ghost Dreaming, was about to undertake entry into the realm of the ghosts. Not only was he to attempt the act of possession, but he hoped to bring all of his people into contact with the
