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
The Undying
Underground
The Promised Land
This edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2017
First published by Angus & Robertson 1999
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
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Royal Exchange NSW 1225
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Copyright © Mudrooroo 1999, 2017
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-925706-00-0 (ebook)
To my dear wife Janine.
“We danced roundabout ... dressed in our breechcloths and academic sashes with all the animals and ghosts under the redwood trees ... The fogdogs laughed and barked from the rim.”
Gerald Vizenor
CHAPTER ONE
Don’t look askance at me, I was one of the first to reach these goldfields and dig for the metal. Yes, I may not be of your colour, but we’re all the same underneath – or are we? Still, what does it matter when the night’s fallen like a thick blanket over the diggings and there’s nothing much to do until the dawn comes in with a scramble and the heaving of dry dust, and you cough and cough and you wonder what you’re doing. But you all know that, don’t you? Just adigging, just adigging for the precious metal.
See these two bits of stick, how smooth and worn they are. Real native artefacts. Listen to the sound, how clear it rings. Crack-crack. You know, they belonged to my ‘once father’. ‘Once father’, I’ll get to that in due course, for there’s a bit of old England in me, and how it got there, well, I’ll make it part of my yarn if the darkness holds up.
I’m here to entertain you, to make the night slide away easy and not too slow, for I know you’re raring to get at those slugs of metal and collect enough to flee this desolate country where the willy-willies swirl up the dust until you curse the day you thought to roam – to here, where time hangs heavy on your minds and you get to thinking of the girl you left behind. Maybe, eh? Well, I remember a girl, but she left me behind. Left me behind: a stranger in a strange land. I don’t hail from these parts. Who does? Just a blow-in like the rest of you lot. I come from far to the south east, from an island and now I’ve become a nomad, a wanderer seeking to find fortune. Strike it rich and we’ll all be home, eh?
Strike it rich! We roam the earth afire with our quest, with our thirst. Drifters, driven here and there by idle rumours, and when the colour’s gone from the soil and the big companies come in to rip deep into the guts of the earth, following down that reef which we just pecked at on the surface, well, we up stakes and off we wander seeking always that lode of gold at the end of the rainbow. Wandering, that’s what we’re good at; but then the land’s wide enough for our roaming and there’s gold for the taking if you get in first or second. Hear tell there’s another strike far to the north, gold for the picking rather than the digging. A mob upped their stakes, packed their swags and lit out for there just the other day where, I hear, it ain’t dry all the year round; every six months or so there comes a mighty flood, just like in the Bible, and when the water subsides there shines the gold. Well, Noah was a nomad too and he circumnavigated the whole globe, just sailing, sailing on that wooden boat of his which didn’t handle too well against the wind, so he drifted rather than sailed her hard; but when the flood went down, he saw the glitter of that gold shining, telling him to leave his ark and rejoice at his strike, for it was the mother lode.
Well, like old Noah I left a ship, though I didn’t rejoice at leaving her. She rather left me, falling apart from under, so to speak, and I was washed up on these shores. Been in the west a long time now, following the strikes from the south to the east and soon it’ll be north for me. But, you know, there’s times when the ocean surges in my brain and I’ve got to head for her and gaze across the waters, remembering that long ago voyage much as you might recall that day you took to the gold trail, much as I dream recall that voyage my friend’s mother made on a shit of a ship. That still rankles in me, but never mind, it wasn’t our mother, was it; but still I feel her suffering as I stare over the tumbling waves and feel the wheel again quivering in my hands like a live thing, and female at that. It’s then that I think of forsaking this land and getting on a vessel with a course set towards the pole star, maybe a brig, not one of those ones that now go charging through the waves, battering them down where once we danced light as a feather.
Yeah, they say we’re in the age of steam and iron. Well, let that be, I still prefer the old ways, which once were new to me. Get on some craft under full canvas and sail north west. Up there lies Africa, and did not the Queen of Sheba come from that continent laden with gold for that old Israelite, Solomon, who it’s been said was a bit of a wiseacre in his time. Gold there just for the collecting, at least that’s what I’ve heard and the voice is getting louder and louder. Once, you know, I had a friend from there and never once did he mention this yellow metal. Yeah, but he was worth his weight in gold to us. He was one of those Africans. Caught, enslaved, fought and escaped, and became a hero of sorts before he took to the sea and became a sailor, sailing, sailing over that lonesome ocean. Guess he’s on her still, between one port or another ...
He was our chief mate, not so much a captain which means something less than chief in our language. Well, he was the one that guided us as we sailed from the east on the ill-fated voyage which would eventually fling me up here, in this place where the dust demons roam, though I’m a bit of a devil myself and cannot abide the day. Still, forget that and just hold a picture of that schooner scudding along. Beautiful, isn’t she? A trim craft, saucy and dancehall smart, who could kick up her heels and lift her skirts high as she skipped across the ocean. A regular Lola Montez, until her bottom got too heavy with the barnacles and
