For a few months in 1989 I lived and worked as a school teacher at Maningrida, an Aboriginal community in Central Arnhemland. ( see remembering maningrida post, April 2nd 2011). I had not been back there - until a couple of weeks ago.
As I tumbled out of the big dusty 4WD bus with my group of good environmentalist/philanthropist companions with our sunglasses and cameras, it felt like arriving in a completely foreign place.
A low brick building, a shady tamarind tree, black women in bright floral dresses. Then I looked across and recognised an AFL football oval and remembered being there at weekends and how the aunties and grandmothers used to call out to their boys on the field.
And I remembered the big old mango trees, and how they dripped with fruit in the last term of school, and how the red dirt and stubble turned to luminous green when the wet season came. I remembered how people sat around on the ground in groups in the shade just passing the time of day, or playing cards. Like they still do now.
I remembered the litter and the dogs, and waiting for the mail plane. The barge arriving once a fortnight with supplies from Darwin. The smell of campfire smoke and the sound of distant clapsticks at night.
People waving at you from their verandahs as you walked by. I remembered how we white teachers raced about the school, all stressed and urgent with files and folders and timetables, living in our little Monday-to-Friday bubble, way out there in the middle of that dreamy timeless country. I thought we must have looked foolish to the folk lounging around under the trees.
The group I was with this time were greeted with a ‘Welcome To Country’ from the White Cockatoo Dancers. The men were wearing red loincloths and were all painted up and leaping about, kicking up little clouds of dust. Slapping rubber thongs together like clapsticks. One of them told us afterwards that they had just come back from performing in Germany.
The women, in their non-matching floral skirts were dancing in a separate clump next to the men and in a much more subdued style. They hadn’t been to Germany.
Whenever there was an opportunity, all of us from Down South would cluster around to hear what the Aboriginal person had to say. Hungry for insights, eager to connect. Such an ironic, and touching reversal of historical race-relations.
Our group was in Arnhemland mainly to learn about how the indigenous Djelk and Warddeken Rangers care for the land and the sea in their traditional areas. We met with the sea and land rangers in their depot/office, and saw maps and heard a lot of information about Indigenous Protected Areas, and what the Rangers do, and how they are funded (inadequately, of course)
We also visited the Art Centre, The Women’s Centre and the Museum at Maningrida. All of it inspiring, but I was just waiting for an opportunity to slip away and wander off in search of half-remembered places from 1989.
I figured that the tumble-down donga where I lived would surely have long ago been bulldozed, but I wanted to walk through the school and down the once-familiar tracks to the mangroves and the scrappy beach which I always found slightly spooky. I used to be puzzled by the clumps of old clothing buried in the sand among the mangroves, until somebody told me they were the discarded clothes of dead people.
At the little museum I chatted to a young man, told him I’d been a teacher back then. We worked out he’d have been too young in 1989 to have been in my post-primary class.
But I mentioned a couple of names of others who’d been there. Primary teachers - the elderly nun, the young huntin’fishin’ guy; and my friends of the time. He remembered some of them, and we shared a few minutes of reminiscence. It made me feel reassured, like I hadn’t just dreamed that long-ago past life or made it up. That young woman who was me really did once live here.
Later I managed to get away from the group and wander over to the school. It has been painted bright colours now, and there is playground equipment and lawn with a sprinkler going where once there was red dust and litter. A Balanda teacher was sternly telling off a little black kid by the playground. “If you need to go to the toilet, go during lunchtime, Zachary, not during class time”
I located the staff room and my old classroom. Everything is now sort of caged in with wire grilles. I suppose because of vandalism. I wonder if petrol-sniffing is still a problem? The sniffers used to hang around the school at night. Though I’ve heard that the dangerous petrol has largely been replaced by non-intoxicating ‘Opal’ fuel. Plenty of other problems though. We’ve been told that youth suicide rates are high here.
I chatted briefly with a couple of guys - white teachers - in the caged-in area outside the staff room. They said there were no teachers still there from twenty years ago “What about Killer?” said one. “Nah - he didn’t come ‘til ‘96 “
There used to be a saying that white folk who lived on Aboriginal communities always fitted into one of three categories: Missionaries, Mercenaries, Misfits. I was a misfit, I guess.
Going into the staffroom reminds me of the day, soon after I first arrived at Maningrida, when one of the Aboriginal teaching assistants came to school with a long necked turtle which she planned to cook for dinner. She carried it around all day, from staffroom to classroom, still alive, hanging by the neck like a bizarre handbag.
I muttered to one of the other teachers in the staffroom that I thought it rather cruel to the turtle. He gave me a withering look that told me I was a soppy idealistic twit from the city and I’d better hurry up and get real about the way things are up here. He was a big tall bloke, one of the ones who used to love to go out with a rifle, hunting with the Aboriginal men.
One of the many reasons I knew I could never live long term with Aboriginal people or become truly part of their world is that I do not care for hunting and am not much of a meat eater. Though I remember a good school excursion where we gathered pippies from the rocks by the sea and cooked them up in a billie. I’d like to be able to say I’ve eaten goanna and turtle and python too - but in fact I passed up those opportunities.
Nowadays, sadly, even the Aboriginal people do not often get to eat goanna or python. Many things have changed in twenty years and one of them is that some species are disappearing. Not only goanna and other reptiles and snakes, but also many small mammals. It’s thought that cane toads are at least partly to blame. Crocodile numbers, however, have increased dramatically.
I was glad to see the school looking relatively clean and bright, with several new buildings and a basketball court. But shocked to discover that all lessons at the school are now in English. When I was there - and right up until Howard’s ‘Intervention’ there were streams in two of the several local languages - Djebbenna and Barada.
Other changes seem more positive - The work of the Rangers, and the impression I got that there are more educated, articulate people around now, a younger generation strong in their own culture and also able to operate in the Balanda world. Like the Warddeken Rangers who were our hosts and guides out at Kabulwarmamyo a couple of days later.
I asked one of the teachers if it was okay to walk upstairs to my old classroom. I walked along the (now caged-in) verandah where I’d had to do endless government-decreed one-on-on testing with the kids, placing ticks and crosses and scores in boxes..
The big classroom is divided into two smaller rooms now, refurbished in grey institutional style. There were classes running, so I didn’t go in.
As I wandered back across the well-remembered hot expanse between the school and where I used to live I noticed a couple of playing cards among the litter underfoot. I remembered how whenever I was on Aboriginal communities I’d always see stray playing cards in the dirt. I’d pick one up and keep it as a sort of omen, translating it into it’s tarot-equivalent. Queen of Hearts/Cups: watery emotions, memories
