the skin over the shoulders was gone forever. Now demure in her rough skirt she shot a glance at the ghost and caught his look of approval. They liked females to be covered below the waist for most of the time.
George Augustus Robinson, destined by God to make the Aborigines the most interesting and profitable part of his life, leered at the forbidden fruits of the bare-breasted maiden who conjured up romantic visions of beautiful South Sea islands where missionaries laboured for the salvation of delightful souls. On this island and on the larger one of Van Diemen’s Land, he too would be such a missionary. He went into his ‘Me, Mr Robinson’ routine and this time received a better response. The girl had been around the whalers and sawyers long enough to pick up quite a few words of the ghost language. She replied that her name was Trugernanna and set Robinson right in regard to the name of Wooreddy. In return Robinson smiled an expression which held more than that of the good shepherd at long last finding an intelligent sheep.
She spoke to Wooreddy and enlightened him about the num. Finally he had the proof that the ghost was indeed an ally. As Robinson quaintly informed Trugernanna: ‘Me look after you, give you food, clothing – bad white man no longer hurt you.’ And as the girl just as quaintly echoed: ‘Bad num no longer hurt us’ as she took the protector’s hand and gazed up into his face with all the adoration of a child – though the fullness of her breasts belied the pose. Wooreddy found himself ignored. It annoyed him that the woman had captured all the ghost’s attention. After all Meeter Ro-bin-un was his ally too!
V
Wooreddy and Trugernanna helped Lunna and the two children to shift along the coast to where Meeter Ro-bin-un had had erected a ghost shelter. It was right on the channel and at night they could see, gleaming across the water, the lights of the main num settlement. Robinson wished to acquire a working knowledge of the Bruny language and took every opportunity to learn from the people. He did not offer to teach them his language in return. This would come later. But the Aborigines had realised that they needed to know the ghost language and they too took every opportunity to learn new words and sentences. They found that the main difficulty was in the pronunciation, unlike Robinson who floundered in the complicated grammar structuring Bruny. He never did advance beyond a form of creole, though by this time so few people were left who spoke the language that it did not matter.
The Aborigines soon discovered that their ally considered himself superior to them. They were to be ‘children’ to his ‘father’. The girl fell easily into the role expected and the word ‘fader’ constantly fell from her lips when Robinson was within hearing. But Wooreddy felt insulted. After all he was a full citizen, not only of his own nation, but of the South West too, and had he not collected, debated and even on one occasion refined a point of law regarding a custom of his people! He was a prominent citizen and a biological father to boot. What was this Ro-bin-un? . . . Then he saw and felt the sickness all around him and surrendered. It seemed a small price to pay for survival.
‘Fader’ gave him some white powder for his wife’s sickness. He mixed it in water and gave it to her to drink. It did no good. She was so weak that she could not sit up. Her body flamed with fever, and to ease her suffering Wooreddy took a sharp piece of glass (shell was a thing of the past) and slashed the most painful parts of her body. The bad blood ran out. For a few days Lunna seemed better, then she had a relapse and died. Wooreddy performed the last rites and sent her soul on the first stage of the journey to Great Ancestor. Then his eldest son caught the coughing sickness and followed his mother into the fire. Wooreddy looked at his youngest son, acknowledged his responsibility, and decided to help him to survive.
Meeter Ro-bin-un did not like anyone going around naked like a human. He wanted everyone to cover their bodies as the ghosts did. ‘Novillee, novillee’ (not good, not good), he repeated over and over again to them in his atrocious accent. Wooreddy could see nothing wrong in showing the maturity of his manhood. What was wrong for the male to do was to neglect the hair. He took great care in keeping his locks smeared with the heavy ointment made from whale oil and red ochre. But now as he was going to see ‘Fader’, he pulled on a long shirt and then stuck a feather in his hair.
‘Fader’ met him with the outstretched hand which Wooreddy politely touched. He explained that he wished ‘Fader’ to take care of his remaining child and almost recoiled at the avid joy with which the child was received. To Robinson this was an important breakthrough. He wanted to separate the few remaining children from their heathen parents so that they could be educated free from bad examples. Now he complained of those bad examples to Wooreddy. They were not to wander where they wished, but were to stay with him, their only protector. Wooreddy replied as best he could in a mixture of Bruny and Ghost. He was stripping his language down to the bare essentials in order to be understood. All the honorifics, family designations and different grammatical constructions he would have used in conversing with a person belonging to the highly stratified Bruny society were unnecessary. The result sounded barbaric in his ears, but it did serve the purpose he had designed it for. And so he replied in this broken Bruny: ‘Trugernanna, Dray, Pagerly maggera raege logana mobbali nunne’ (The three women have gone off to the other num for the last three nights). In the same style, though using a number of Ghost-words, he described the death of his wife and eldest son. He complained of the coughing demon and of how the island had become a place of evil. Meeter Ro-bin-un said: ‘Nonsense!’ Then he hinted (that is, if Wooreddy understood correctly) that they might be leaving shortly on a long trip. Wooreddy questioned him and verified it. They were indeed going on a long trip. How he longed to be away from this evil place! The tie between earth and man had been broken and he never wanted to return.
Meeter Ro-bin-un decided to go and save the three women from the ruffians at the whaling station. He dragged Wooreddy off with him. After he had slowed from the mad dash with which he started things, he pointed out shrubs and expected Wooreddy to give him their names in Bruny. After this he began to talk on things close to Wooreddy’s heart, though he would never realise this. He talked down to Wooreddy on religion and much to his surprise found that these children of nature had some faint inkling of a creator god. Wooreddy equated the Christian god with Great Ancestor and gave the name: Parllerde. Robinson tried to elicit further information on their primitive religious beliefs, but the primitive form of communication he was using collapsed under the weight of abstractions. He did manage to learn that they also had the concept of the devil, called Ria Warrawah. This gladdened his heart, for now he had the two necessary terms for him to begin preaching the gospel to them.
The whaling station was a clutch of ill-shaped wooden sheds about a few large iron pots used for boiling down the blubber. Robinson marched right into the centre of the station, recoiled from the smell of rotting whale flesh, then recovered himself as the manager bustled toward him. Wooreddy, forgotten, hung in the background, his eyes moving in search of the women.
‘Mr Robinson, I assume,’ the manager said in the direction of the on-coming Robinson who, steaming with all the righteous wrath of the Lord of Hosts, immediately began the offensive.
‘Sir, it is disgusting, too disgusting for words,’ he spluttered, fighting to control his pronunciation. ‘Sir, ‘ow can you allow your men to take advantage of these poor creatures? Sir, it won’t be permitted, I ’ave t’ear ob t’gov’nor –’ He paused to recover himself. ‘Never fear, it shall be in my report. It won’t be permitted sir, it won’t be!’
The manager, recovering from his surprise, replied coldly in a middle-class accent to which Robinson was practising to attain. ‘What won’t be, Mr Robinson, and what exactly are you talking about?’
‘Native women have been enticed into your station.’
‘Enticed, enticed, that’s a new word to describe it. Sir, we cannot rid ourselves of them.’
‘Sir, if you read the gazette you will know that His Excellency, Governor George Arthur, has placed me
