Limuk (Inheritance)

Waking up heavy in the mornings I wriggle and move myself to remember the way and the weight that I can carry.

I’m walking to check the mail and not much in the mood to talk when I run into the farmer – and the farmer loves an audience, all that time alone. He talks a while, of wattle and wire and getting dropped off in the mountains with the local Aboriginal boys. I listen, never knowing what is truth and what is stretched tall tale-d for dramatic effect.

For better or worse I am agreeable and always polite. I insert nods and mmm’s when called for, but I stay vigilant of curses and caves I should not enter. You see, the farmer remembers my dad, both shearers and shepherds. He pauses his story and draws his now squinting eyes into the distance, down the back paddock and beyond, about 31 years. The farmer recalls the day of my dad’s accident. ‘It was tragic…’ he trails off ‘hid be proud o’ ya, yeeeah ee’d be proud’. I wonder for a second how I can feel so seen by someone who rarely looks me in the eye when he speaks. His thousand-yard stare making all the more sense now, knowing what he has seen.

From a young age I can remember on forms at school, next to the prompt ‘religion’, I would write Aboriginal. It was around the same time I’d decided I was cursed too.

I grew up in a drought. Once I walked across the dry riverbed of Barengi Gadjin with cracks so big and dry you could lose a shoe. I barely understood then how deep this river runs through my bloodline. A short drive (by country standards) from Barengi Gadjin, congregating with the scrub and the animals, I worship Gariwerd. These mountains like great cathedrals. Here, we exchange words in Wergaia and share an understanding of coming and going widjiwa. Of fire as an old friend and ancient technology. Of regrowth, like our relationship, different than what it once was and exactly as it is meant to be.

It’s hard to make sense of things in a senseless colony. It’s hard to make a living. Some of the farmers are driven mad, breaking their backs to keep out ‘roos when all of what you see belongs to them anyway. Waiting for rain to come, crops to grow, for the sun to set red and rise again. Sadly, common for some to leave their beds and families one day and never return.

Why can’t we see eye to eye? After all I believe the farmers do too, you know, worship this place. I’ve seen it. God’s country! And in all that time alone, whistling while they work, have they not been visited? I may be superstitious but there is no good to come from coveted secrets, scar trees, stolen goods or stones on the mantle.

When I think about the clearing that’s taken place here I feel winded. All this crop and livestock that don’t belong.

As if holding council, a single magpie on a fence post looks to be addressing ten or so more in the long grass below. I imagine they are discussing the same thing. How to get back on track. I imagine as they sing their songlines that I am hearing a memory of what once was. A land in the hands of those that speak its language.

Piecing back together the now dilapidated shack where my grandparents once lived and imagining, my nanny from Lake Boga, gazing out from the window to where I am now stood. I’ve heard words recounted like ‘Nina’s gone walking again…’ and I’m thinking about how homesick she must have felt. How homesick is a feeling, at risk of hyperbole, I have felt intensely my whole life. Homesick for people I’ve never met and a life not able to be lived.

Driving home defeated. You appeared just in time as batyangal (a pelican) flies over my car. I ask you, how can I turn all that is out of my control into something that I can? Do you, the wind, feel me back? In the same way life has always been more liveable when I see your face and features in my mirror image, may every day be a reminder that you are not alone.

If I am here, I mean right here for a reason, please let it be to turn this soil and these thoughts into something good.

Not a curse at all but a calling.