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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780855756772 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Aboriginal Studies Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2009 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Back on the Block
Bill Simon's Story
By William Simon, Des Montgomerie, Jo Tuscano
Aboriginal Studies Press
Copyright © 2009 William Simon, Des Montgomerie and Jo TuscanoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85575-677-2
CHAPTER 1
BEGINNINGS
Mission statement
If you were to ask me if I had a happy childhood, the answer would be a definite yes. I was loved, fed, clothed and cared for not only by my parents but also by our extended family that lived around us. As far as I was concerned, I had no problems. Small children are oblivious to the anxious, hushed voices of their parents late at night, to the complexities of the adult world with all its worries, to the feelings of hopelessness that parents might have when they realise that they cannot offer their children much of a future. Much later on in life, I knew what people probably thought: 'He must have had a rotten childhood. He's ended up like he did because his parents probably neglected him.'
My childhood didn't turn rotten until I was ten. Like the families around us, we lived in a small hut made out of wood and corrugated iron. We had a table, chairs, two beds, a cupboard and a wood stove. There was no electricity and no running water. Behind our house was a dam where we used to catch fish and yabbies, using a bit of string tied to a small empty tin with bait in it. Often these yabbies fed the whole family with Mum's soup as well. I had a normal, poor but very happy Australian family life. Well, almost.
Most Australian families lived in a place of their own choosing, coming and going whenever they felt like it. They went to work, came home, did the shopping and bought and ate what they felt like eating. Not us. We lived on the Purfleet Mission, just outside of Taree in New South Wales. It wasn't a place of our choosing, we couldn't come and go whenever we wanted, there were no jobs to go to, no shopping to do and no decisions about what to buy and eat. All of our food was rationed out, and if the manager was displeased with us our rations could be cut or held back.
* * *
With colonisation Aboriginal life had changed dramatically. White cedar getters and their convict servants started arriving in the Myall and Manning areas in 1816, dispersing the tribes and having a devastating effect on traditional lifestyle. Settlers arrived in the Manning Valley in 1831, and conditions deteriorated rapidly for the Aborigines. They lost land, sacred sites and hunting grounds as settlers took up land grants. Wildlife dwindled as a result of the settlers' guns, timber-getting and cattle grazing. By 1840 the natural food supplies were almost exhausted. The traditional owners of the land were driven to the fringes of the towns where some people found employment on the railways, farms and cattle stations. A fringe camp was established at Taree, and later, in 1890, an Aboriginal camp was established on Purfleet Station. Originally, the Purfleet Reserve comprised twelve acres, and it was later known as the Purfleet Mission and expanded to an area of 51 acres.
Compulsory education for all children aged between six and fourteen years was introduced in 1880. At first, Aboriginal children enrolled in local schools, but by the mid-1880s there was a policy of educating Aborigines at mission schools. A Mission school and church, run by the United Aborigines Mission, were established at Purfleet Reserve in 1902 and operated for many years.
Purfleet Station was Government Reserve Number 89 and was established in 1900 by the Aboriginal Protection Board (see Ramsland, 'The Aboriginal School at Purfleet', p. 7). It was at one time called 'Sunrise Station', but that name was later dropped because of negative associations with the Japanese flag during the Second World War. The area was known to the Aboriginal people as 'Turrumbumdeen' meaning 'long grass among the trees'. Purfleet, like all government missions scattered all over the country, existed so that Aboriginal people could be kept in the one place, where the government could keep watch over them.
After 1932 Aboriginal people were not allowed to leave the missions without permits, which were only granted to a few 'approved' Aborigines. Some women married white men just to escape from mission life. During the Second World War there was employment for Aboriginal men and some worked off Purfleet but with the end of the war came unemployment and the men had little or nothing to do.
* * *
The management at Purfleet had no knowledge or interest in Aboriginal culture and so had their own idea of how we should be treated. This was the period of assimilation. Aboriginal culture and heritage was out. White man's culture and laws were in and we had absolutely no say in it whatsoever.
It was into this tumultuous period in Australian Indigenous history that I was born to Isaiah (Ike) Carter and Grace Simon on 30 March 1947. My great-great-grandfather was Chinese and came out in the gold rushes. My father was from the Black Duck Tribe from down near Wallaga Lake, my mother from the Biripi people who inhabited the area between Tuncurry, Taree and Gloucester. The Simon family is one of the oldest families in the district, having been settled there, with four other families, for many generations. Traditionally we spoke a dialect of the Kattang language, a language that apparently is spoken twice as fast as English. The name Taree comes from an Aboriginal word 'Taree-bit' meaning 'fruit of the wild fig', a staple in the diet of my ancestors. According to my mother, I smiled up at her and dad on that first day without a worry in the world. They however had much to concern them.
Life on a mission was particularly difficult, especially for the men. The rules imposed by the Aborigines Welfare Board had a devastating effect on them. Aboriginal men were by nature the hunters and food providers, but mission life obliterated their role and their identities. Their hereditary ways weren't just discouraged. They were outlawed. If my Dad brought a kangaroo back to the mission to cook, he would be punished by a reduction in flour rations. If the kangaroo was shared with other families, their rations were also cut. Fishing was prohibited and done in secret. Withholding the weevil-ridden flour ration was a regular punishment, but there was nothing else, as it was a staple food needed by all of the families. A kangaroo, rabbit or wallaby only ever supplemented the already scant rations allotted. Strangely, instead of the manager taking the view that our catch would just top up the food already supplied, he subtracted rations to keep everyone on minimum levels. Men on the mission felt constantly humiliated.
As children, we knew none of this. My world was not the world of stories around the campfire, of hearing Dreamtime tales of animals, spears and water holes. I knew nothing of our ancestors' skills in hunting and dot painting. Neither was it the world where children went off to school every day and had piano lessons and rode ponies. I was living in an in-between 'assimilated' world and I just got on with playing the games that kids play. After me, Mum gave birth to a baby boy whom they named Luke, but unfortunately he died soon after from diphtheria. Two and a half years later my brother Murray came into the world, then fifteen months later my brother David was born. Space was now getting short. The bed was getting crowded but there was one more sibling to come. My brother Lenny arrived when I was about seven years old, and my family was complete.
Sunday was the only bright spot in our dull mission week, when we were permitted to go to Uncle Berty Marr's church with other mission families. It wasn't the best church I've ever seen, but it was filled with people who cared about each other. We sang songs and listened with interest to what Uncle Berty had to say, and we always left in a better mood. Occasionally a fella named Mr Hermann used to come to church to play his piano accordion and tell stories to the kids. We enjoyed his visits. I had no way of knowing then, but he and I were to meet again much later in another place under very different circumstances. After church the children played out the back on an oval with a water well in the centre. Our parents warned us over and over again to stay away from it.
'Keep away from there or the Hairy Man will get ya after sundown and take ya away,' my parents warned. There would be plenty of Kooris out there who still remember the stories told to them about the 'Hairy Man'. It may be the same sort of threat that white kids heard about the Boogie Man. Once a young child went missing in the bush and we were told that the Hairy Man must have taken him. We never saw him again.
The dam behind our house wasn't just a source of food to us. We are from the Biripi people, a coastal tribe who have a close association with water, so the dam was the perfect place to spend time whenever we could. I couldn't have imagined life without it. Whenever a parent was looking for one of the children, the dam was the first place they'd check.
At Christmas time my Mum and Dad, along with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, all left Purfleet to go down to a nearby beautiful coastal place called Saltwater, where we'd stay for six weeks from Christmas Eve. Even today this is a sacred part of the coast for the Biripi people, as it has been for many years.
This was the only time our people could reclaim some of the traditional lifestyle that was prohibited. Small details about how we used to live traditionally were passed on. I learned that our ancestors lived on seafood, possums, grubs and wild fruit. They made stringed musical instruments from wallaby tail sinew. I learned about the concept of recycling and thinking of others: that when eating fruits and wild bush food we did not put the seeds in a bin like whitefellas. We left them to be swept up by the river and transplanted somewhere else to grow for the next people to find them. Because of the relative isolation of Saltwater, the adults could talk about mission life away from outsiders.
The days we spent at Saltwater were a special time for us as children. We played and swam from daylight to dusk and ate our favourite food. The adults sat around singing and telling stories late into the night. Dropping off to sleep with those sounds in the background was very comforting. It gave me a sense of belonging, a sense of family and a feeling of being safe and secure, knowing that Dad and Mum were nearby. My father was strict about grog. There was no drinking in front of kids. Drinking wasn't a problem and those who wanted a drink did it away from the campsite. Most of my family were Christians and their beliefs sustained them more than any amount of grog could.
Our time at Saltwater always came to an end far too soon. The kids whined about going back but soon adjusted to mission life again. For reasons we didn't understand, the grown-ups were always sombre on their return to the mission, particularly the men. As soon as they returned from Saltwater they became withdrawn, sad and quiet. The cycle of humiliation had begun again. The women tried to make up for the men's sadness by being positive and keeping up the family's morale.
Down at the beach the men could escape the drudgery of mission life. With stories, songs and traditional food, Saltwater was like a release day from prison. Back at Purfleet there was nothing for them to do but miss the old ways. On rare occasions, permits to work outside the mission were granted, but most men spent their days sneaking off into the bush to play two-up and talk. Our times at Saltwater were carefree, full of laughter, but hanging over the good times was the realisation it wouldn't last. Every year going back was harder than the year before.
The more time passed, the more anxious my father became about living on a mission. He, like all others, longed for a different life for his family, an independent existence, away from the rules and regulations of a government-controlled community. He could see that the mission system had not changed since he was a young man. The glaring reality was that any Aboriginal living on a mission would never be able to improve their lot. The low standards set by the authorities years earlier were still in use. Nothing had changed and nothing was about to change. My father realised that he was going to have to leave Purfleet. He was never going to have a family life the way he dreamed of by staying where he was. He was tired of being controlled by the government, Boards, managers and by people who thought they knew best. He decided we had to move.
We had to sneak away when no-one was expecting it, such was the tight rein on the movements of Aboriginals within the mission system. Secrecy was most important, so we children weren't involved in any of the planning. One night in 1953, my parents woke their children, and under the cover of darkness, my family stole quietly out of Purfleet.
* * *
We went by train to Kendall. My granny Doris, along with Uncle Ray and Auntie Deb and their children, had already moved to Kendall, which made it easier for Mum and Dad to join them. Auntie Deb had told Dad about the shack next door to hers being vacant, so in we moved.
My parents were like new people in Kendall. They were much more at ease and far happier after the move from the mission. We settled into a little cottage, and Mum went about making our new place into a home. It was a little cramped, but in the Aboriginal culture family is everything, and it was better to be a little short of space than to have a homeless cousin or uncle. To my young mind, the more people there were, the more fun we could have.
My Mum slowed down that idea of having too much fun by enrolling me in the local school. I was more interested in exploring the bush and fishing holes than starting school, but school had its good side; it only went for six hours and we got to play at lunchtime. School in Kendall was held in the old picture theatre; it was small and not too strict. Science, music and art were my favourite subjects and I always tried to do my best in them. The best part about going to school was the sports, especially soccer, which was my favourite of all the field games.
Dad had become a changed man since moving to Kendall. Not long after we arrived there he started working for the local section of the Forestry Department. Unfortunately it wasn't full-time work and so he had to work as a boxer for the different shows around the district. He was a very fit, muscular man who was good at boxing and who had won quite a few fights on the show circuit. Together with his brothers and cousins, he trained in boxing with the famous Dave Sands. We missed him when he was away, but after a while we got used to his coming and goings. Life was best though, when he was working in the forests nearby.
I had a close cousin who went by the nickname Boxy. He and I spent a lot of time together looking for different ways to get some pocket money. We picked ferns for display windows and collected bottles for return money. If we had enough money we'd go to the local baker and buy bread. Then with the smell of it wafting in our nostrils we'd race back home, spread butter and Vegemite on it, and scoff it down while it was still warm. Often our Nan would take us down to the beach to help her collect shells. She would clean them up and use them to make craft, at which she was gifted, and then Boxy and I would sell them.
On the weekends the school reverted to a picture theatre. Our bottle collection money meant that sometimes we could see a film and eat lollies as well. There had been nothing like it back on the mission.
Every year Kendall had its local show and we always looked forward to it impatiently. Enough bottle collection money meant we could go on rides, eat hot dogs and go to Sideshow Alley. As soon as the show was over we'd go around the grounds again, looking for more bottles. We weren't the only ones doing it; there was a lot of competition around from the other kids.
Our other activities in Kendall included picking pears and persimmons and taking them home to Mum to make jams. I don't think I'll ever taste jam like that again in my life. It's a small thing I took for granted back then. Now, it has an important place in the memories that are left of my mother. We loved exploring the sawmill when it was closed on weekends, and going fishing. Occasionally a family friend, Mr Duck, would take us out in his boat where we fished from the middle of the river. Mum used to let us go further up the river than she normally would have because he was there keeping an eye on us.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Back on the Block by William Simon, Des Montgomerie, Jo Tuscano. Copyright © 2009 William Simon, Des Montgomerie and Jo Tuscano. Excerpted by permission of Aboriginal Studies Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Editors' note,
Foreword,
From the storyteller,
1. Beginnings,
2. Stolen,
3. Lost,
4. Finding A Way,
Index,