Mardi Pyne - JCU Journals

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THE CURSE OF GINAGXYEE Mardi Pyne Kulara was several miles from the highway, over a very bad road, and what was left of the town did not promise draia. A hotel, a hall, a school, a railway station, a post office, a shop and a few houses, a general aura of paintless, spiritless, ramshackle delapidation. It was the only ton- ship which stood in the path of the Tinaroo Falls irrigation scheme, where the waters of two rivers were in the process of being dammed into a lake two thirds the area of Sydney Harbour. I had been asked to find out why there had been no agitation to move the township to another site, but one look gave me the answer. It was Sunday, but from the back of the hotel came an un- steady, muted ululation, so I knocked. The mid-summer heat was as intense and overpowering as was the perfume on the woman who opened the door. A split second later the offer- ing of the room reached me, an unlovely admixture of St4Ie liquor, stale smoke and stale sweat. Anxious only to get away I made a foolish Introduction and asked where the ne "Kulara had come from. Chipped fingernails caressing brashly bleached hair, she didn't know she was sure and was that all, love? I muttered something about coming back when she was not so busy, turned into the blinding glare, and .id not see the old quarter-caste sitting on the tank stand until he spoke, softly and musically.

Transcript of Mardi Pyne - JCU Journals

Mardi Pyne
Kulara was several miles from the highway, over a very bad
road, and what was left of the town did not promise draia.
A hotel, a hall, a school, a railway station, a post office,
a shop and a few houses, a general aura of paintless,
spiritless, ramshackle delapidation. It was the only ton-
ship which stood in the path of the Tinaroo Falls irrigation
scheme, where the waters of two rivers were in the process
of being dammed into a lake two thirds the area of Sydney
Harbour. I had been asked to find out why there had been no
agitation to move the township to another site, but one look
gave me the answer.
It was Sunday, but from the back of the hotel came an un-
steady, muted ululation, so I knocked. The mid-summer heat
was as intense and overpowering as was the perfume on the
woman who opened the door. A split second later the offer-
ing of the room reached me, an unlovely admixture of St4Ie
liquor, stale smoke and stale sweat. Anxious only to get
away I made a foolish Introduction and asked where the ne
"Kulara had come from. Chipped fingernails caressing
brashly bleached hair, she didn't know she was sure and was
that all, love? I muttered something about coming back when
she was not so busy, turned into the blinding glare, and .id
not see the old quarter-caste sitting on the tank stand until
he spoke, softly and musically.
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Coolara', he said, 'its called for the holy tree. If
you wish, I'll show itto you.'
In the hollow that has become the lowest local point of
the inundation was a giant fig tree, so huge you would look
again to make sure there was only one. A fig tree, one hun-
dred and thirty three feet in circumference (i measured it twice on each of three separate occasions) hundreds and hun-
dreds of years old, and long, long ago the Aborigines called
it Coolara.
It was the central feature of their corroboree ground, the
sacred Xippa ring, where boys were admitted as hunters and
warriors to the brotherhood of the tribe. It was the sanctuary
of the bones of the great chiefs, the skulls and kundri of the
medicine men. What white man first saw Coolara?
It could have been Christie Palmerston, Tallabilla the Out-
law, who reached for his gun before he greeted his guest,
fled forever from some unknown vengeance, and scattered the
path with plenty of his own.
It could have been the charming, gentle and generous James
Venture Mulligan, when he followed the Barron and thought
quite logically that it was the Mitchell. For where else but
in this wild strange land would you find a stretch of alluvial
plain common to one mighty river flowing to the east, the
other to the west? He sent the first sample of tin ore to
Brisb'ne, in 1875, from a site a few miles farther on, remark-
ing sensibly that it was of interest to know it was there,
but how to get it out without losing heavily on the operation
was the difficulty.
And it cçuld have been John Atherton, the bluff, hearty
and hardy cattle pioneer, who took others to the Wild River,
and there showed them the fabulous Great Northern lode in
1880, and so began another great trek, and the birth of
}!erberton.
.3?
Onethinq is certain. The Aborigines of the Nadjun tribe
noted their passing, at first with awe of the Scraped white
bodies of the resurrected dead, gradually reverence and
veneration giving way to mounting tension, worry and resent-
ment.
First in ones and twos, then in droves of dozens, into
the west the white men plodded, their failures and successes
on the Palmer, the Hodgkinson, forgotten in the dreams that
lay dormant, enticing and exciting, in each mans prospecting
dish. From where the brown men watched and worried, seldom
was heard the song of Murruirba - the Good. In their hearts
was fear of Gaja - the Bad - and of him one did not speak.
Soon a shack was erected, because this was a good place for
a stopover, for a shanty house, for food for the pack and
saddle horses, a little food and much drink for their owners.
Before long a buck coach track was hacked from the scrub, and
Cobb & Co. began another service. At nightfall the jingling
of the harness, the cries of the drivers, the greetings of
old and new corners drowned out the sad and lonely cry of the
Nadjuns especially beloved bird, the shy kirwirmanda, which
the white men called the curlew.
Until 1889 no attempt was made to use the land near the
stopover. Then a settlement scheme was evolved in faraway
Brisbane by Sir Alfred Cowley, who had, to do him justice,
spent several hours at the site. He envisaged a highly
civilized urban community, planned from its inception on the
European model. A township area was surveyed, with quarter-
acre homestead sites, reservations were made for churches, a
community hall, a hostelry and a store. Behind the town area
each settler was allotted a forty ac selection and no one
family could hold title to more than four blocks. It was
thought that in this way the women would have each other's
company and comfort, and the men work harder, knowing the
settlement large enough to be safe from marauding savages. The
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cost of the survey was high, reven and sixpence an acre, but
in the final analysis not one man built his home on his
quarter acre town block. The government planners had
forgotten that the highly civilized farming communities of
Europe, that had so taken their fancy, possessed neither
k.angaroos, wallabies, black clouds of crows and cockatoos, nor
the nomadic Nadjuns, unversed in the white naris laws of
property.
The first man to settle on the land was John Ignatius
Stewart. He and his wife, their five daughters and two sons,
had gone to Herberton from Port Douglas in 1881. They bought
two pack horses and walked the whole way, doing six or seven
miles a day. The small ones were packed on in gin cases,
and the little boy who was five the day they lobbed at Granite
Creek, remembered vividly in his eighties, the games their
parents played with them on the journey, and at the end of
each long day the stories of the saints told them by their
mother as their father checked the equipment, mended shoes and
groomed the horses. Eyes lit with the glow of long memory he
said, smiling gently, They were a grand pair, were my mother
and father. Eight years later they took up their block at
Allumbah Pocket, and a few months later the second settlers
arrived.
their eighties they had no difficUlty in recalling in detail
the early struggle to establish their farms. They grew
vegetables and packed then to Thornborough, now a deserted
ruin, but then the big town on the Hodgkinson, boasting a
population of over eight thousand, centre of the long-gone
shire of Woothakata. When the boys had sold the vegetables
they used the horses to pack quartz from the mines to the
battery, and with eight horses, they could make fOurteen pounds
a week, and go home with that, and the vegetable money minus
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their board as well. When it was muddy the work was hardest,
but there was little respite, nor did they look for it. They
both knew the significance of 'Coolara'.to the Aborigines,
both regarded the tree and the corroboree ground as the
property of the Nadjuns, but all white boys did not have the
breeding and consideration of these two pioneering families.
Other settlers came, and the village grew at the old stopover.
Back from their walkabout in search of decreasing game,
the Nadjuns found their reliquaries inside the huge hollow
trunk of the sacred tree broken open, skulls strewn on the
ground and stuck up on sticks, kundrjs vanished, the white
paint and red clay of the chief, Ginagiyee, used to make draw-
ings on the bark. Never, since the dawn of their history,
recorded in their tribal chant, had such a sacrilege been
envisaged. It was the penultimate disaster. All that would
follow, in a time of disillusion and oppression, was
annihilation. Until then there was simply endurance, in a
bitter blankness, without faith, without hope.
The long chant of the Nadjuns, taught to the Kippas as part
of their initiation, told their history, their code of ethics
and their responsibilities, but there was never another
initiation, so the chant stopped short at the sacrilege. All
that we know is that Ginagiyee called on the spirit of the
tree to record his curse of its desecrators. He promised the
Nadjun tribe that the Sons' SOOS of the despoilers would lose the land.
Mr. Fred Stewart was the first person I met who corroborated
the story told me by the Courteous quarter-caste. Over the
next twelve months I contacted others who knew something of
it at first-hand, such as Mr. Charles Roseblade, and some,
both white and coloured, who had heard the story from the old
timers. Naturally, there were variations in these latter, but
finally, at Danbulla, I met a very co-operative elderly
Aborigine, who patiently gave me much of the Nadjun story, and
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even more patiently coached me in the pronunciation of the
great chief's name. His story, and Mr. Stewart's version of
the curse, were identical. As he had not then seen Mr. Stewart
for three years, I considered this reasonable verification. The
depredations of fire, termites and lack of interest have
resulted in few historical certainties in the Far North,
especially as legend and fact tend to overlap, even in semi-
official records. 'Said to be', 'thought to be' and 'rumoured
to be' recur a little too frequently for the keen collator.
To clarify the material I followed a practice I have found
helpful and took my notes back to the scene of their beginnings.
One clear sunned June day 1 topped the hill that descended into
Stony Creek, and looked from this height across the smaller
hill that stood between me and the dense spreading foliage and
cavernous base of the NadjUn's holy tree, Coolara. Drooping
with fatigue, I closed my eyes and brooded on the demarcation
line between fact and fiction.
Without surprise I saw that the Nadjurk were there in force
on the corroboree ground far below. They were apt to arrive
like this, I knew, overnight, apparently from nowhere. But
something was different this morning. The high shrill keening
of the death dirge came mournfully across the valley. Was it
Ginagiyee? Oh God, I thought, not Ginagiyee, who could hold
the tribe despite hunger, the depravity of opium, the half-
caste children, the disintegration of the sept laws, the erosion
of individual integrity.
I decided to walk over and contact the old chief, hoping
desperately the death dirge was not for him. As I got closer
I saw with relief that they were wearing loincloths. The
whites' strange predilection for insisting on covering one
particular portion of the body was inexplicable to them, but
near the settlement they had learnt to conform, only sometimes
at the' end of a long walkabout needing a reminder. There were
no gins, no children. Aware, no doubt, of my approach, they
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gaveno sign of it. Out of sight at the edge of the clear-
ing I stood and saw with shock and rage the desecration of
the tribal reliquary.
were listening to Ginagiyee. He stood partly facing the
tribe, partly turned to the tree, slender limbed, of medium
height, his arresting face markedly protruding in the long
proudly erect head. His wavy hair was streaked with white,
the piercing deep set brown eyes under greying brows curiously defenceless in defeat.
He raised his arms in supplication to the spirit of the
tree, then addressed both tree and tribe in the lilting
musical cadence of the Nadjun tongue.
Oh my people, my brothers of the bowed hearts,
In the still hush before the birds' first call
Our spears will sing and shine no more
With glory for Coolara.
Our manhood here we pledged to serve
The spirit of Coolara.
We, our fathers and our fathers' sires.
Here did we keep our relics, the core of our tradition,
Here did we hope to hand its secret to our sons,
And they to their sons, and the sons of their sons sons. -
Soul cherished chain of duty linked in trust
But forfeit to Coolara.
And each dulled soul alone and nameless finds
No solace in Coolara.
In the shadow of Coolara.
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Two years later I went back for the last time. The white
man's genius has brought the great gift of water to a parched
land, the gigantic lake, engulfs the scene of the white man's
small endeavour, the brown man's age old endurance.
Time has run out for Coolara. Water lapped its noble
roots, crept towards the green branches spread in benediction
over the lesser brethren of the forest. For hundreds of years
they were the Nadjun landmark, and I knew they would soon
wither and die; the stark white stalk would then go, as the
proud brown man has gone. There are still brown men in the
Far North, but rare indeed is one with a pride in his race.
Sometimes there is a flicker of recognition, a touch of glory,
a hint of grandeur. Half remembered, half forgotten phrases
tremble at the door of memory. Tremble, and are gone. Gone,
as is now, Coolara. But,listen!
The %.'ind is blowing gently from the west, from the Nadjun
Valley beyond the sunset, where all is peace. borne on its
poignant soughing, dimly down the decades, down the arches of
the years, is the voice of Ginagiyee, in sorrow, admonition,
warning, rising higher above the plaintive lamentation of a
vanished tribe -
Their sons' sons will till the soil no more
In the shadow of Coolara.
Tread softly, Ginagiyee Go softly all thy days