now the famine is almost over.’
The group remained sitting on the rocks, chatting among themselves, with a slight breeze rustling leaves. Zeno emphasised how they needed to live among village families, share with them and chronicle their lives. Louise thought about her Australian Aboriginal friend Mandy Watson and how through her dot paintings and Dreamtime stories she was able to recall the lives of her ancestors.
At this point, as the morning sun began to warm them, Zeno said they should continue their journey. They rose, stretched their legs and climbed back into the vehicles.
2: Aboriginal Influence
Mandy Watson
MEMORIES HAVE A place in one’s thinking. Louise’s time, when she was thirteen, with her Aboriginal friend Mandy Watson in South Australia’s town of Crystal Brook was no exception. Louise remembered the day she first saw Mandy at the town football oval one Saturday afternoon. She was a lively, dark-skinned girl about her own age with shiny brown eyes, who was wearing a bright-coloured dress and seemed to chat with everyone. Louise was intrigued. Mandy skipped along like an excited cockatoo. She was tough, fleeting, rarely in one place or with one friend for long.
Later Louise heard she was known as flippant and a school truant. Mandy didn’t share the conservative country town’s views about the separateness of Aboriginal Australians which, even in early 1970s, was still practised. Mandy’s spirited and often mischievous behaviour led many of her teachers to dislike her. In turn, she took little notice of their advice and direction. During the week when Louise first met Mandy, her brothers Geoff and Alex were staying at the family home at Stirling in the Adelaide Hills.
The sight of Mandy walking jauntily round the oval and the flash of her smile made Louise want to get to know the girl. So she left her grandfather’s car that was parked facing the peeling white oval railings, fastened her anorak tight and headed into the cold breeze. The girls smiled as they came face to face.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Louise.’
‘I like that. Mine’s Mandy. Where do you go to school?’
‘At Stirling, in the Adelaide Hills.’
‘Are you here on holiday then?’
‘Yes, we always come here for holidays.’ Gaining confidence, Louise asked, ‘Do you go to school in Crystal Brook?’
‘Nah, haven’t been to school for weeks. No one can make me go. It’s boring.’
‘What do you do when you don’t go to school?’
‘Hang about, meet boys, do some painting.’ She paused. ‘Most of all I look for wild animals and collect lizards and frogs. Collecting stuff’s good.’ Noticing Louise’s expression, she added, ‘But I don’t keep everything, not live things, I let them go again.’
Louise imagined meeting Mandy’s friends, walking and camping in the bush and patting the soft fur of a joey, or koala. Then with the quick smile which always lit up her face whenever something excited her, she said, ‘I like wild animals. Can you show me some?’
‘Sure – do you want to find some this afternoon? Now?’
‘Yes, if we can, but I’ll tell my granddad what I’m doing.’
‘Okay!’
The girls walked back to Louise’s grandfather’s station wagon. ‘This is Mandy,’ Louise said proudly to her grandfather, who was standing with his footy friends on the edge of the oval. ‘Is it okay if I go for a walk with Mandy?’
‘Oh, hello.’
Her grandfather looked surprised, then said, ‘Yes, but be back at the clubhouse when the game’s over and we can have some of your grandmother’s goodies.’ Louise knew that Grandfather Max Davitt had definite routines that he didn’t like to change. Talking with his mates on Saturday afternoon at the footy was one of them.
The girls wandered away. Mandy suggested they search for lizards in a paddock at the edge of the oval.
‘You’re Aboriginal, aren’t you?’ Louise asked suddenly. She had little idea about Aboriginal Australians, except that they were black and mostly lived in the desert. Meeting Mandy was exciting.
Mandy smiled. ‘Yep, and proud of it.’
‘Have you always lived here?’
‘Not always. Mum and Grandma come from up north at Oodnadatta.’
‘Did you live there?’
‘To begin with, and then mostly with Grandma.’
‘When did you come here?’
‘Last year, when Grandma got sick.’
Louise wanted to ask where her mother and father were and who she lived with in Crystal Brook, but didn’t. She was dazed.
‘Go on,’ Mandy said warmly, ‘ask me all you like and then I’ll ask you where you really come from.’
‘Okay, what does your grandma do?’
Mandy looked puzzled. ‘Grandma paints about the Dreaming. It’s a while since I’ve talked about Grandma’s painting. None of the other kids at the school are interested. I can show you some if you like.’
‘I’d like that.’ Louise was intrigued. She wasn’t sure how you could paint dreams.
‘See that pond over there, that’s where we’ll find frogs. Sometimes I wade out and then my boots get sucked down in the mud and I put my head under the water to see what’s there. But I don’t stay under long.’
‘That’s amazing.’
At four-thirty, when the siren went for the end of the match, the girls were half a mile away, searching for frogs at the edge of the small pond. Louise didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear the siren. As she trailed her hand through the water her fingers snagged on slimy knots of weed. In the depths light shimmered and the scent of eucalyptus and wild honeysuckle hung over the water. Feeling a feathery breeze on her cheek and seeing clouds scudding across the sky, she was captivated. She would have ignored even a trumpet call.
‘There’s one,’ said Mandy, expertly catching a small frog and nestling it in the palm of her hand. ‘Here, want to hold it?’
Louise held out an open hand and Mandy gently transferred the minute frog.
‘Grandma paints frog Dreaming; how they find and go to waterholes. I’m learning how to paint frogs and lizards so catching them I know what they look and feel like.’
Louise wasn’t at all sure what catching frogs and lizards had to do with painting, let alone Dreaming, but Mandy was persuasive.
‘Don’t squeeze the frog – you need to hold it properly. You’ll soon learn.’
At this point, with the cold and sticky frog in her hand, Louise was aware that the football siren had
