Riding the Black Cockatoo (13 page)

{ 12 OCTOBER 2005 }

Just after sun-up, the songman phoned. It was Jason, the young man I’d spoken to when I’d first made contact with Mary’s people; he had arrived – without Gary! There had been another death in the clan and Gary was obliged to stay behind in Melbourne to take care of the arrangements. It seemed that every second time I spoke with an Aboriginal person, someone close to them had died.

‘Another one!’ I spat the words out. It makes me cringe now to admit it, but I felt very put out; I might as well have said, ‘Can’t you people stop dying, we’re trying to organise a repatriation here!’

‘Yeah, we’ve had a bad run lately; we’ve lost four in the last few weeks.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to sound sympathetic, and I was, but the news of Gary’s non-arrival had knocked the wind out of me.

‘Listen, John, I can hear you’re disappointed, but we’re going to do this, and it’s going be fine, okay.’

The confidence in Jason’s voice reassured me. He was right; Mary was still going home and that’s all that mattered. We agreed to meet at the ABC Radio studios at 9 a.m.

‘Why is Daddy staring so hard at nothing?’ Bianca asked.

‘Don’t forget to chew,’ said Stella as I gulped down the bacon-and-egg breakfast she’d prepared. ‘You won’t be of use to anyone if you choke.’

It was true, my mind was far away and I was forking food into my maw as if I was shovelling coal into a furnace. After breakfast I spent a few minutes touching up a short speech that I’d been wrestling with; somehow the short speech had ballooned into six pages. There was a long list of people to thank and acknowledge, but more importantly, how could I possibly explain the bizarre relationship between my family and a long-deceased Wamba Wamba man? The more I wrote the more knotted up I became, until I realised that what I was really doing was trying to justify a wrongdoing. With a heavy black marker I crossed out line upon line, until only a third of the speech remained. I folded the pages and put them in my pocket. I’d have another look at it later, now it was time to pack Mary.

I opened the studio door, and the scent of lemon myrtle greeted me – the room, the case, everything smelt clean, renewed. I laid Mary on his side and packed the leaves around him tightly; he looked majestic wrapped in his green going-away finery. I tried to say something poignant but realised that the night before had been our proper farewell – the moon, the dancing trees, the silence had said it all. The case catches closed with a final farewell snap. The fragrance lingered on my fingers; I put them to my nose and inhaled deeply, feeling myself relax a little. I followed my feet out into the yard and tore some larger branches from the lemon myrtle. My feet then took me to the garage where our little blue Mazda hatchback sat. I brushed the branches through the car’s interior, purifying it, and then arranged them neatly along the back parcel shelf, pushing the sprigs flat so I’d be able to see out the rear window. Gathering up the loose leaves, I tore them into smaller pieces and jammed the native potpourri into the ashtray; I hoped Bob and Jason weren’t smokers – if they were we’d be having our own little ceremonial fire in the Mazda! I had no idea what I was doing, I was letting instinct lead me. When I’d finished, the car reminded me of a funeral boat, the sort that took fallen Nordic warriors across the misty waters to Valhalla.

I kissed Stella and my two daughters; they were going to meet me at the ceremony later. I was worried the girls might freak out from all the noise and whatever it was that the songman had planned. ‘Now, there’s going to be loud didgeridoo music and dancing and smoke, but there’s nothing to be scared of, Grandma and Grandad will be there too.’

‘Will it be a party, Daddy?’ asked Bianca.

Two-year-old Lydia looked up expectantly. ‘Cake!’

I opened my mouth to say no, but nothing came out.

‘Daddy doesn’t know, sweetie,’ Stella answered, ‘it’s going to be an adventure for all of us.’

I placed Mary’s case and the headdress on the front seat, buckled him in, and drove off to get Bob.

Bob’s house was a simple postwar cottage, similar to many others in the street except there was no front fence, just a big mango tree and grass that spilled out to the footpath. I like yards without fences. A friend of mine has an Italian father-in-law who often observes, ‘When I first came to this country, the fences were this big’ (he indicates by putting his hand at waist height) ‘and everybody happy. Now the fences all this big’ (he says, holding his hand over his head) ‘and nobody happy.’

I climbed the few short steps and knocked – the door was open. The front room looked like an office; a tall filing cabinet adorned with Aboriginal pride and activism stickers blocked most of my view. A computer hummed away in the background while piles of folders leaned this way and that. It was the sort of workspace where the in-tray never emptied.

‘See you this afternoon, love,’ Bob called over his shoulder as he came to the door.

I recognised his face instantly from the years of television and newspaper stories on Aboriginal affairs and activism; stories that my father had snorted at, stories that I had ignored. He held out his hand. Bob had a smoky beard the size of Santa’s but without the curly bits. He wore a bushman’s hat, boots and jeans. A screenprint of a fierce Mayan figure stretched across his black T-shirt; underneath, the words read ‘World Congress of Indigenous Peoples’. I guessed that Bob was in his late fifties or early sixties, but the mischievous twinkle in his eye made it hard to tell. I could picture him as a cute ten-year-old getting his plump cheeks squeezed by a gaggle of adoring aunties.

‘Where’s Gary?’ he asked, noticing the empty car.

‘Not coming. Death in the clan,’ I explained. ‘But Jason arrived this morning, we’re meeting him at the radio station.’

Bob stopped mid-step, pausing to digest the information. ‘Okay,’ he said in a tone of total acceptance. ‘Let’s go.’

Mary lay in the front seat.

‘Where would you like to ride?’ I asked.

Bob paused again for a few moments. ‘I’ll ride up front, put him behind me.’

I moved Mary to the rear seat and strapped him back in.

Bob climbed into the front then reached around and very gently patted and rubbed the top of the case. ‘How you going, old man?’ he asked quietly.

We drove off.

‘You would’ve been better off going the other way,’ Bob advised as we headed down his street.

I stopped and crunched the car into reverse. After a couple of hundred metres we had gathered speed and the Mazda’s differential started to protest. Bob asked casually, almost gently so as not to distract my reverse driving concentration, ‘Ever heard of a U-turn?’

‘I was just going to back into that side street back there but I missed it,’ I explained. ‘I’ll get the next one.’

‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘thought you might be reversing all the way into town.’

I continued to reverse. A car approached us from behind, travelling the right way. It began flashing its lights. I reversed into the side street with only a metre or two to spare. Bob slammed his foot into an imaginary brake pedal and began muttering something about the sweet mother of god.

Bee-eeeeeep!!!! The car swept by, its driver waving his fist through the window.

I looked at Bob; he was a lot paler than when he’d first climbed aboard. He adjusted his hat and I apologised. ‘I’m a bit nervous.’

‘So am I!’ he answered.

Although Bob’s foot continued to hit his imaginary brake pedal and I noticed that his fingers had assumed a python-like grip on the armrest, we arrived at the ABC studios without further incident. It wasn’t
just
my driving, he reassured me, city traffic always made him nervous. Bob disappeared for a nerve-settling smoke while I spoke to the security lady on the gate. She found my name on the visitors list and gave me two nametags.

‘I’ve got you down as three visitors, possibly four?’

‘No, just the one more,’ I explained. ‘Keep an eye out for a lost-looking Aboriginal guy with a didgeridoo.’

Moments later a yellow taxi glided up to the gate; the driver and the passenger sat for a while, winding up a conversation as the motor idled. Eventually the cab door opened and laughter poured out, followed by Jason Tamiru, the hippest, strongest, friendliest-looking Aboriginal man I had ever seen.

‘He doesn’t look lost to me!’ cooed the woman from the security booth, her appreciative eyes running up and down Jason’s impressive frame.

The cab driver helped Jason get his didgeridoo and bags from the back of the station wagon. In fact he was the most helpful and pleasant cabbie I think I’ve ever seen. He seemed smitten with Jason and looked as though he wanted to come to the interview with us!

The interview was to be pre-recorded and would go to air later that day. Bob, Jason and I sat on one side of the booth and the interviewer sat on the other. After a really nice introduction the announcer went straight for the freak-show angle.

‘So, John, tell us, what’s it like growing up with a skull in the family living room?’

A little wave of anger swept up my spine. This was my family we were talking about in public. I took a deep breath and explained my father’s eclectic collection and pointed out that Mary was not a trophy. I surprised myself by how clearly and purposefully I spoke. Thankfully the rest of the interview centred on the true spirit of the story: Mary’s journey home. Bob was an old hand when it came to working the media. He spoke clearly and precisely, explaining how human remains had been plundered from burial sites through the 1800s and 1900s and shipped by the crateload to local and overseas institutions for scientific study. He explained that while many colleges, universities and museums were starting to return remains from their collections, about 10 000 were still held by Australian institutions and 5000 by their British counterparts. However, these figures represented only the numbers that repatriation experts had been able to accurately confirm.

‘Even today,’ Bob explained, ‘collectors and antique dealers are quietly trading the remains of our ancestors on the internet. But the overwhelming majority sit in cardboard boxes and plastic bags in museum basements and dungeons all around the world.’

The interviewer asked the question my father had asked. ‘Bob, a lot of people will be listening, thinking, what’s the big deal? You don’t know who it is, it’s possibly thousands of years old, why worry about it?’

‘The dead have rights,’ replied Bob firmly. ‘They have the right to be placed in their final resting place, in their own country, so that they can enter the spirit world and become one with their mother, the Earth.’

But the interview wasn’t all serious and sombre. It ended with the story about my father’s reluctance to attend the ceremony until he learned that Gary’s son played for his beloved Essendon Football Club. Everyone fell about the booth in hysterics when I mentioned Dad’s Essendon garden gnome, attired in the black-and-red jersey with a little football tucked under his arm. There was lots of laughter and ribbing – it was a nice way to finish up.

Out in the carpark, we handed in our security passes. The security officer was still all eyes for Jason – this guy had magnetism! Ten o’clock; we had just over an hour to get to the ceremony. The University was only a ten-minute drive away, so we had plenty of time.

‘Nice headdress,’ said Jason as he climbed into the back seat beside Mary. His nose twitched, following the scent of citrus to the parcel shelf behind him. ‘Hey, I love this stuff!’ He ran his hand through the bushy arrangement and put his fingers to his nose. ‘Makes wicked tea, and you can cook with it too, it’s great for smoking fish.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Bob from the front, half twisting to see what Jason was talking about but keeping one eye firmly on the road.

‘All this lemon myrtle back here, what’s its botanical name, Citra-something?’

‘Backhousia citriodora,’
I said, hoping I wasn’t sounding like a know-all.

Bob nodded his approval and got back to the important business of scrutinising my driving.

Jason and Bob hadn’t had a chance to say much to each other prior to the interview; now they fired off the names of family and acquaintances, teasing out shared connections and the corresponding root notes of their personal and tribal songlines. As each common relationship was established, they relaxed – quite visibly – into each other’s company. I felt privileged to listen in as the two men exchanged news and gossip that, quite literally, traversed the continent. As it turned out, Jason wasn’t from Wamba Wamba country at all, he was a Yorta Yorta man. However, as the clans were close neighbours and as Jason was a nephew of Gary’s, he possessed both the knowledge and the connections required to receive Mary and to escort him back to country.