From the reserve at Maamba, with my old friends gone, I set out on a two years’ pilgrimage of the South–West, through all the old camping grounds which had become railway cities and towns and centres of industry, pastoral and agricultural. In the whole Bibbulmun area I sought the living remnants of the various groups, the turkey-totem, mallee-hen, oppossum, emu, fish, kangaroo. Many were completely extinct. Two or three old derelicts with women who were their unlawful wives according to aboriginal convention comprised the largest camps I could find, all of them Government pensioners or beggars.
As members of the groups died out, the ranks closed in, and men and women from east of the dividing ranges mixed with the river people (beelgar) and sea-coast people (waddarn-gur). The birth of half-castes still further broke up the wandering families, for the half-caste fears and dislikes his mother’s people, and objects to the communal food laws, while the natives despise the half-caste for his colour and his breed and his odour.
At Busselton the salmon trout group was represented by one old man, who sang for me the songs of the spawning season while he imitated the movements of the great spate, and told me the legend of huge cannibal dogs that daily hunted human flesh, carrying men in their mouths to the lair. This legend attained a curious significance when fossil bones of a flesh-eating sthenurus were discovered in the Margaret River caves in the vicinity. The last survivor of the Albany tribe, Kalgun or fish totem, was Wandinyilmemong, a solitary White Cockatoo. From Albany I went to Bremer Bay, and then fifty miles inland to Jerromunggup. There I found a five-generation family, but they were not all full-blood. Ngalbaitch, the matriarch, was a lively old woman, and might easily have survived to see the sixth successive branch of the family tree. As there can be no more than three generations in aboriginal genealogy, Ngalbaitch called her great-granddaughter “Mother” and her great-great-grandson “Brother.” The girl was a Chinese half-caste, born with no eyelids, and Ngalbaitch’s brother had performed a surgical operation with a skill and intelligence rare in a native. He had pulled out the skin covering of the eyes, held it vertically and slit it horizontally. As the cut edges healed, they had actually developed lashes.
At Ravensthorpe and Hopetown, the natives had almost completely died out. At Esperance there were but two old brothers, Deebungool and Dabungool, known as Dib and Dab. I rode a draught horse fifteen miles to interview Dib. He told me that the circumcised tribes had by this time encroached upon his home-ground. They had given him a woman, but had taken his little son Ro, and initiated him into their tribal practices. Between Esperance and Eucla, there were not half a dozen natives along the coast, but at Twilight Cove, where the explorer, Eyre, was rescued by an American ship, I found a true first cousin marriage, the only group of true first cousin lawful marriages that I could discover in the South–West. Another group also having true first cousin marriage laws was among the Roeboume area group of the North–West.
The mallee-hen group of the Palenup or Salt River area ended sadly. A special friendship called babbingur between certain brothers-inlaw prevailed among the Bibbulmun, and two Palenup babbingur were the last of their group in the district. These men dung to each other in an extraordinary comradeship. In the passing of the years one became emaciated and listless from some disease-or it may have been the loss of the will to live. His babbin cared for him devotedly, worked for him, hunted for him, fed him. At some white man’s farm or sheep-run he would find employment, but the white employer would tell the sick friend to work or get out. The moment his babbin heard the words, he would put down axe or spade and move on with his mate.
The wanderings circled their home ground, and one day the sick babbin lay down by the riverside and died. His friend dug the grave and buried him, lingered in the vicinity a little while in mourning, seeking no food, until he, too, became feeble and listless. He had lighted no spirit fire for the dead man, because there was no fear of the spirit of a friend so much beloved. All round the little area he walked with stumbling feet, and at last laid himself down near the new-made grave, and the two kaanya souls passed over to their heaven together.
I reached Bridgetown in the wet and windy wintry weather. Its fertile hills and valleys are among the finest fruit-growing districts in Australia, and, as Bibbulmun country, had provided unlimited food for the groups for countless centuries. Bridgetown yielded one old man, living in his beehive hut on the side of the new road. His dwelling was sheltered from the bleak winds and rains, and he preferred his freedom to the comfort of a hut offered by the Bridgetown municipality. He received Government rations, blankets and tobacco, and lived contentedly by his little kalleep. I came upon him on a rainy morning, and I sat beside him in the shelter, with a thermos of tea, cake and tobacco that I had brought for him, listening as he explored the memories of his life history, genealogy, dialect and myths. Another winter, and he was gone from the place for ever.
The wild cherry groups (jeeuk) between Esperance and Katanning were few. At Kojunup and Narrogin the same sad state of things prevailed, the few derelicts eking out an aimless existence with no interest in the new life or people. The totem either preceded or followed its human borunggur. Food was supplied to them, but they were all wanderers. I would sit with them for an hour, a day, a week, learning from them, pitying them, but unable to bring back the old conditions. We parted always as “relations.” I knew their simple social organization, and could speak to them as one of themselves, a blood-relation, and listen patiently to the old songs and stories. Many a time I found the end of a legend begun at Albany or Pinjarra, or the beginning of another whose end I never heard, but they were always comforted by company and understanding.
Everywhere I heard the plaint-“Jarigga meenya bomunggur” (The smell of the white man is killing us).
The love for their own group area urged them to reach it and die on their own ground, but the spread of the white population sent them wandering ever farther and farther, so that they made superhuman efforts to reach their kalleep when they found themselves growing old and feeble, for fear that their spirit would be a trespasser upon strange country and lose the way to Kur’an’nup when the time came.
Old Yeebalan of Kendinup, a township east of Albany, found herself in the Dumbleyung district when palsy and blindness came upon her. Her white protectors tried to dissuade her, but she promised them she would go back to the Hassals of Kendinup whose sheep run had been her father’s group area, and who had been good to her in her young days. They gave her food and money for the journey, and she immediately handed it over to the derelicts in camp in return for their hospitality, as in their primitive sense of honour every native must. Months later, after a solitary journey through the white settlements, she crawled towards the old Kendinup homestead where she had so often sought and found food and clothing. It was empty and deserted. Yeebalan made her last camp in the gully, and died a few days later.
There was a native reserve in the Katanning area, where it was hoped the Bibbulmun relicts would find rest in the evening of life, with their own shelters and fires that no institution could give them. I, put up my tent near by, and made friends with my new “blood-relations,” gathered from near and far. Munggil, the oldest, of Ravensthorpe, a mallee-hen, had a grievance against the world, and in his moments of dementia would sing his woes the whole night through, in the shrill monotone of the joolgoo-kening of the forgotten corroborees. Among the Australian aborigines, as among the southern Irish peasantry, there is a curious sympathy and compassion for the mentally afflicted, so Munggil’s ravings were patiently listened to in silence.
Some half-castes were there, one, Henry Penny, with white completion and blue eyes, who easily passed as a white man at every hotel in Katanning.
A poor consumptive girl, Ngungalari, was one day brought in to me from Kojunup, carried in a stretcher by her father and sister for twenty-five miles. She had been reared by kindly and gentle white people, and had become used to their ways and refinements. While she lay dying, I took her a lace-covered tray and all the little appurtenances of afternoon tea. Although she was in the last stages of disease, she loved to handle the thin slices and dainty cups as she had seen her white girl companions do. She died very quietly a week after she arrived.
It was through the patriotic desire of Togur and Daddel to see the Coronation pictures, and the unlucky gratification of that desire, that brought the measles to the Katanning camp in the 1900’s. There were some fourteen family shelters at the camp, besides two bachelors’ huts, the total of inhabitants being between forty and fifty occupants. Togur and Daddel had come to my camp the morning after the visit to the pictures, to tell me in their own way what they had seen, and myself and the rest of the children who had all gathered to hear the account, were treated to a dramatic recital of the wonderful things seen and heard, the mimicked play of the various musical instruments; the manager’s high-toned announcement of the various pictures; the clapping; the crowd; the native comments on this or that series of films, and the sigh of regret when the wonderful sights were over. All these were presented with strong dramatic force, and we listened and applauded heartily. It was the last merry day at the camp.
The second morning after the visit to the pictures, they came to tell me that Togur and Daddel were sick, and would I come over and see them. I went over, and knowing that measles was rife in Katanning, I turned down their lips-the easiest way to tell when a native has got measles-and found of course what I looked for. It seemed to me a case of doctor and hospital, so I sent a messenger post-haste to town, and on the heels of the messenger came the doctor.
“Yes, it’s measles,” he announced, “and Daddel has got it rather badly.”
“When will it be convenient to take them to the hospital, Doctor?”
“Can’t do it. The hospital is full to overflowing with measles and other patients; they’ll have to remain in camp, and I’ll come out daily to see them. You’ll have to do the best you can, and I hope it won’t spread amongst them. Give them gruel, milk, soup, tea, any liquid food for a few days,” and the busy doctor hurried away, leaving me stranded with two measles patients.
To begin with, I can’t cook. I had never made gruel. I had, however, either heard or read somewhere that properly made gruel took four hours in the making. I wish I could put all the native magic I possess into the fiend who made that statement! My fire was an open one, and the winter winds of Katanning are not faithful. I sat down by the fire on a kerosene case to make my first billy-can of gruel, the billy being a two-gallon one. There was an east wind when I began, and I sat to the eastward of the fire and commenced to stir the oatmeal into the cold water. The wind shifted suddenly, and the fire caught a handful of my hair and singed it. I changed my seat, but the wind changed too, and blew smoke and flames against my scorched face. I stirred the gruel steadily, discarded the kerosene case, and walked round the fire and billy-ccan to the forty-eight points of the compass with which the wind was flirting that dreadful afternoon. I had started the gruel-making at 2 p.m., and at six exactly I took it off the fire. By that time I had recited Fitzgerald’s Omar at least six times, each time with increasing vehemence, the while I monotonously stirred the gruel. It wasn’t the words of the poem that brought the relief to my feelings, but the way they could be uttered that helped. There are times when Bajjeejinnajugga suffices, but that afternoon was not one of them, and after repeating it about ten times I fell back on Omar. Neither quite filled the bill, however, and I found out afterwards that gruel took at most only half an hour to cook.
Togur proved an excellent little patient, taking the medicine, gruel, or anything I gave him obediently. Daddel was a horror to nurse. The measles had touched him rather heavily, and he became too “slack” to lift even the spoon, so I had to spoon-feed him four times daily, and coax him to take the necessary nourishment and medicine, and even when he was recovering he would hide the food I brought him rather than sit up to eat it, and so I had to sit beside him until he had finished the last bit.
On the top of nursing there came Nung’ian from Kojunup, a poor girl in the last stage of consumption. She also had to be kept in camp and ministered to, though one could only tempt her with a few “white” delicacies, for the poor girl-she was only 26-had gone beyond the coarse damper and black tea; indeed she only ate a few trifles I brought her out of regard for me. On the evening of the sixth day she died in her sleep.
Meanwhile Togur and Daddel became convalescent, and just when I was in sight of a little rest from nursing and cooking, Daddel’s own mother, and his “second” mother, and his seven brothers and sisters all caught the infection, and the real work of nursing and cooking began. Baiungan, the older wife, got the measles very badly and lay absolutely helpless for days. Her little baby, Muilyian, was also, very ill, and not having been weaned, there was the added trouble of special baby food. Baiungan and her five children occupied her half of a beehive shelter, a space not more than five feet in diameter holding the family! They lay with their heads within the shelter, their feet towards the open fire-place between the two huts, and to reach one I had to lean over the others, who were huddled up at either side. They lay like peas in a rounded pod, in that dreadful ............