Riding the Black Cockatoo (18 page)
{ 14 OCTOBER 2005 }
The wave of Mary’s return had washed me back onto the shore, but the land I had returned to would never be the same. All morning, friends and acquaintances who had seen or heard the story in the news phoned or emailed, sometimes with just a simple, ‘Well done,’ but often they wanted – needed – to know more. Depending on how I thought each person would react to the more otherworldly aspects to the story, I told either a short version or a long version. The long version took at least fifteen minutes to recount, and if the listener was particularly receptive, could take much longer. After each telling, whether long or short, I put down the phone, physically and emotionally drained – as if I’d been through a reliving of the last two weeks.
Shortly after lunch, one of the women from the Oodgeroo Unit phoned. She was distraught.
‘Have you seen what they’ve done with Jason’s picture?’
‘Who has, what?’ I asked, concerned, but equally relieved that I wasn’t the cause of her distress.
She explained that one of the big media corporations had posted on their website a picture of Jason taken at the handover.
‘Wait till you read the story,’ she cried.
I typed in the address as she read it out and promised to phone back after I’d taken a look. Seconds later the news page materialised, with a close-up photograph of Jason playing the didgeridoo. It was a well-composed picture, and everything was there: the possum-skin cloak, the flag-covered case containing Mary, the fire with its grey-white smoke curling like a spirit ghost. Then I read the headline:
Didgeridoo named an offensive
weapon
.
The article was one of those light-hearted ‘Isn’t the world a zany place’-type reports. It was a British story about a young man from Sussex who had smashed a window and threatened a couple of policemen with an ‘Aboriginal musical instrument’. The bobbies arrested the man and charged him with possession of an offensive weapon. When the story came into the Australian newsroom, the editor must have grabbed the first photograph of a didgeridoo player he could lay his lazy hands on, and Jason’s would have been wired to the newspapers the night before. I pictured a spotty kid in a three-sizes-too-large Tottenham Hotspurs shell-suit running amok with a dodgy souvenir brought home from an Australian backpacking holiday; then I looked at the picture of Jason – a songman, a custodian of culture, a future elder. Anger surged up my spine like molten lava. ‘That’s
my
friend! That’s
our
smoke! That’s Mary! Bastards!’ There they were again, pulling the rug out from under something beautiful, something empowering, something that had touched so many people.
‘Utter, utter bastards, I can’t believe this!’ I spat over and over as I stomped around the house spraying spittles of rage in my wake. I showed the picture to Stella; she groaned in disappointment and sadness.
Jason’s mobile phone was out of range; I left what must have been the world’s most incoherent messages. I returned to the computer and looked for a phone number for the website’s editorial department. Typically, there were plenty of numbers available for people wanting advertising rates, but there was no way in, no way to challenge or call into question the veracity or integrity of the news stories which oozed from the teats of this media bovine. After ten minutes of excavating my way through the site, I reached for the phone book and found the number for the organisation's television studio in Brisbane. I asked the receptionist to put me through to the head of the newsroom. From my kitchen window I could see Mount Coot-tha, just fifteen minutes bike ride away. Four spindly television towers rose from the ridgeline. As I listened to the on-hold music, I looked to the southernmost tower and imagined the conversation in the studio offices that stood near its base. ‘Where did he say he was from?’ ‘He didn’t.’ ‘How many times do I need to tell you, find out where they are from, and find out what they want; your job is to weed out the nut-jobs. Ohhhh, put him on.’
A gruff voice terminated the digitised Vivaldi. ‘Newsroom.’
Usually, I handle confrontations badly. I never seem to find the correct path, I’m either mealy-mouthed or my emotions run away with me and I end up saying things I regret. But right then I rewrote the textbook on assertiveness; I wanted Mary’s smoke back. After listening to my story the newsroom manager said a few choice words about his interstate colleagues and happily looked up the number for the news desk for Sydney.
I’d learnt many lessons over the last two weeks, and one lesson was this; hesitate and you’ll lose your nerve.
I punched in the number. Another young, smooth-voiced receptionist answered, but before she’d finished her sentence I rolled straight over her.
‘John Danalis, head of news please.’
My tone was low, forceful yet restrained; it was my impression of a media-savvy voice.
Without saying another word she put me through to a slightly older female voice.
‘John Danalis, head of news, please.’
The way I said my name worked a treat, as if she – indeed everybody – should know who I was.
‘Ohh, yes, one moment.’
I rolled through one office after another until I came to a stop at the desk of a senior editor; I wasn’t rolling any further until I explained myself. My voice had run out of bluff and my meagre assertiveness reserves were almost depleted. I had nothing left but honesty.
‘Your website is displaying an image that is causing a great deal of upset to the Indigenous communities in two separate states, to a university, and to me. It’s only been up for a few hours, but if it stays up it’s going to cause an almighty stink.’ I explained that yesterday’s ceremony was the spiritual and cultural culmination of a journey that had touched many people.
‘That smoke is sacred and it has no business next to a story about some moron in Britain. You have no idea how much offence this is causing.’ But from the way my voice wavered – pulled apart between anger and sorrow – I’m sure she understood.
She took down all my details and promised to get back to me within half an hour and gave me her direct number and name just to reassure me.
Ten minutes later the phone rang. This
was
the head of news and he had exactly the sort of media voice I’d been trying to affect.
‘John, I wanted to let you know personally that our people are pulling the picture as we speak, it’ll be gone in a minute, so no harm done, eh.’
I blabbered a few protestations – ‘You’re supposed to be professionals, a first-year journalism student wouldn’t make this mistake.’
‘Look, the editor on this one was a Kiwi, so we can’t expect too much from him, can we?’ he laughed.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘They’re supposed to be more switched on about cultural matters than we are!’
He bounced back with a smarmy chuckle; this guy was like one of those blow-up punching clowns. ‘Lo-o-ok, no harm done, eh?’ His voice reached down the phone line and patted me on the shoulder.
My skin crawled. I could almost hear the rattle of his chunky gold bracelet. ‘Well, there was, actually . . .’ But I was out of fight; at least Mary, Jason and the smoke would soon be out of the greasy grasp of the tabloid media. ‘But thanks for sorting things out.’
Five minutes later, when I hit the Refresh button on the computer, the picture was gone.
Jason phoned later in the day. ‘Hey, I got your message, something about my photo, you sounded upset.’
I explained what had happened, and that I was thinking about making a formal complaint.
‘Welcome to our world,’ Jason laughed.
I was silent, stunned by my friend’s lack of indignation.
‘Look, thanks for getting them to take it down,’ he said, ‘but just let it go now, save your energy for the big fights.’
‘Let it go? But it was your photo they misused!’
‘Hey, do you think this is a one-off?’ he said, ‘This happens one hundred times a day to us; ever notice that whenever they show a negative story on the news about Aboriginal people they nearly always run it with pictures of blackfellas sitting under a tree, as if that’s
all
we do. And most of the time the pictures they use don’t even relate to the people in the story, could be some mob from the other side of the country. I used to get angry, but if I got upset every time it happened it would kill me. It’s better to laugh and stay strong.’
After the call I thought about what Jason had said. He was right, but I’d never understood enough, or cared enough to notice. I’d just spent almost three weeks getting to know quite a few Aboriginal people, and not once did I see one sitting under a tree. Not that sitting about under a tree is a bad thing; there should be more of it. In fact, take a walk through any city park at lunchtime or on the weekend and you’ll see scores of Westerners, Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, South Americans and Laplanders sitting under trees. Why doesn’t the media represent those groups as ‘under-tree sitters’? But how often do we see photos of Aboriginal people doing ‘normal’ everyday activities? Like walking the kids to school, reading a book, or enjoying a Thai curry!
{ NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2005 }
I had a lot of catching up to do. I was behind on all my assignments and exams were fast approaching, but somehow I muddled though. Occasionally I would wander through the courtyard where Mary’s handover had taken place. With every visit the ceremonial ashes and burnt stick ends became harder and harder to find. After a few weeks there was no trace left. At the end of semester, when most of the students raced back to their lives, part-time jobs and holidays, I stayed on. The library had an extensive Indigenous Studies collection: textbooks, art books, essays, maps, literature, films and music. As I waded into this secluded cultural waterhole, the bottom fell away beneath my feet into a sheer 60 000-year-old drop.
I returned to the shore each night with new material drawn from the shelves at random. By day I read and by night I watched movies and documentaries. The weathered face of actor and dancer David Gulpilil, as timeless and familiar as Uluru, became a regular presence on our television screen. Didgeridoo and clapstick song filled our lounge room and drifted like smoke through the wooden louvres and out into our street. I marvelled at the effect these rhythms, chants and beats had on Bianca and Lydia; they would move about unconsciously with fingers splayed, as if they’d already been taught these brolga dance steps. They
knew
how to move to this music, it was as if the rhythms simply reached in and awoke something that was lying dormant, the way a bee pollinates a flower.
Initially it was hard to come to grips with Aboriginal culture and society; its mind-bending timeline; its astonishingly distinct yet interwoven diversities. In many ways it reminded me of the complexity of Europe. Imagine doing a crash course on European peoples, their cultures, languages, cuisine, art, architecture, folktales, myths and belief systems, and then trying to summarise in a few neat paragraphs what it means to be European; it would be an impossible task. And yet that is largely the shallow representation of Aboriginal Australia that was presented to me when I was a young person – a mere caricature, the man on the two-dollar coin.