Born Into This Read online

  ‘Spread out, people, and slow down.’ The marshal ran alongside the footpath, bellowing and sweating into his loudspeaker. I slowed my pace. My throat was scratchy from yelling, and my lips felt desiccated. I should have brought another water bottle – one that I could actually drink from.

  At the next set of lights, another police blockade waited with some media folk. A tall brunette reporter in a navy sports coat and fitted slacks scanned the marchers with an intensity akin to a cat monitoring its prey. She looked at me and then away. Shame, I thought. She was cute.

  Then, after the intersection, a hand grasped my elbow lightly – it was the journo. Her dark fingernails rasped against my skin, giving me a tingle that followed my nerves all the way to my armpit. She looked over the top of her sunglasses at me, and her lips parted. I felt seduced, even though I knew she was just doing her job.

  ‘Would you mind saying a few words about the march? About what Australia Day means to Aborigines?’ she said, letting go of me. ‘I’m with the Tasmanian Herald.’ She took a notepad from her coat pocket and flipped it open.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. I relayed my opinions as she took notes. I babbled in my nervousness. When the loudspeaker came near, she leaned in close and I spoke into her ear. Strands of her hair blew into my mouth, and I tasted raspberries. She moved on, then, to the mother with the snotty pants. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but it faded fast as I remembered what I was planning to do.

  ‘Go home, ya fucken wankers!’

  Two teen boys and a girl with heavy make-up sat on the steps outside Franklin Square. The one who had called out had a skateboard resting across his knees.

  ‘You go home, fuckwit. Back to Gagebrook,’ said stiff-legged Jack, referring to the rough suburb on the far side of the river. He was by my side again, and we were cutting through the square, on our way to Parliament House. The teen’s rant trailed off behind us.

  Stiff-legged Jack hobbled forward at a surprising pace, unperturbed by the young hecklers. He raised the megaphone. ‘Come on, you fellas. The fat cats’ll be able to hear us from here. Let ’em know what we think of Australia Day.’

  The crowd booed. Someone yelled out, ‘Shame.’ The footpath became a bottleneck as the police blocked us from walking on the highway. Up ahead, the dancers and the kids holding the large Invasion Day banner started crossing, moving down towards Parliament House Lawns. The march had stretched out to almost a kilometre, and I was somewhere in the middle. The chanting had ceased as we walked across the highway, but as the lawns and the gathering crowd came into view, the loudspeakers sparked up again, and the progressing throng found their second wind.

  I experienced a twisting wrench in my stomach, a tightening chest. I took a deep breath but struggled to get air. It reminded me of a time I was given dope cake at a house party during college; I couldn’t feel the air going into my lungs and panicked, thinking I couldn’t breathe. My cousin Jimmy put me on the trampoline outside and talked me down until everyone else had gone home.

  I felt for the package in my jeans. It was there. Part of me had hoped I’d lost it somewhere, so I wouldn’t have to go through with it. You’ll be fine, I heard Jimmy’s voice say in my head. No-one’s ever died from dope cake, and no-one’s ever died from what you’re going to do.

  The protesters filtered through the stone gates onto the lawns. I was surprised at how succulent the grass looked. Looming above, like a love sonnet to colonialism, stood the sandstone monstrosity of Parliament House. To us, it was the physical manifestation of Australia Day, an ongoing reminder – a memorial, really – of the European invasion and all we had lost. A middle-aged hippy with grey pigtails and patchwork overalls gave it the finger as she passed through the gates, cursing the rotten bastards inside.

  People gathered below the steps. Above them was an open area, bordered by a square, yellow hedge. This was our stage. A sound crew in black t-shirts fiddled with the PA as a group of official-looking people milled around. Stiff-legged Jack and others I knew were amongst them. Their faces became solemn as they readied themselves to take turns addressing the ravenous media, gathered there in numbers.

  A dark man with a long grey beard tested the microphone and introduced himself as the MC. He wore one of the protest shirts, distributed to the crowd by the marshals earlier in the day. In bold, white capitals, it read: CHANGE THE DATE. The rally kicked off with a minute’s silence, for the fallen heroes of the black resistance, and all the blackfellas who had passed on since. The crowd parted for a faux funeral procession, led by two wailing women Elders, arm in arm. Following the women were four community members, hauling a fake coffin constructed of thin plywood, painted matte black and adorned with eucalyptus branches and bright wattle flowers.

  I felt a stab of envy towards the pallbearers. It was an honour to carry the coffin, something reserved for those who have fought in the struggle. I was overlooked, year after year, which was fine – I was young. But one of the pallbearers this year was new in the community. How had they got to be there? If I hadn’t respected the ceremony, I might have sworn at them, out loud. Declared them a greenhorn in front of everyone.

  To finish the ceremony, the dancers took up the branches from the lowered coffin and swept them across the ground in graceful arcs. They circled the funeral procession, stamping their feet in jagged motions and gripping the backs of their wallaby-skin cloaks with their spare hands.

  The speakers then took their turns, each of them introduced by the enthusiastic MC. The first speaker was a shadow minister in the state opposition, who droned on about the failings of the current government and, in particular, their unwillingness to change the date of their Australia Day celebrations. The crowd cheered, and someone yelled, ‘Shame.’

  Short memory, people, I thought to myself, clapping along with the rest of them. This woman headed the previous government. While in office, she too had refused to change the date.

  The rest of the speakers blended into one, with the exception of stiff-legged Jack, who spoke last. He described the atrocities committed against our people, in the days of the Black War. He recounted massacres that occurred around our island. His attention to detail was fascinating and gory, but he spoke an undeniable truth that made even the yobbos and the rednecks at the fringes of the crowd stare at the ground.

  He ended on a positive note: ‘There is, indeed, hope for the future,’ he said, and indicated, with a hand gesture, to the large crowd.

  I thought about what stiff-legged Jack said to me earlier. Stand out, brother. I knew what he meant. I knew what I had to do. Sometimes, it’s your turn to stand out. And to stand up. Sometimes, it’s just your turn.

  Like I knew he would, stiff-legged Jack opened the mic up to the crowd. I was already making my way to the stage as he said the words. He nodded, as he handed over the microphone. I turned from him to face the people. My people.

  ‘This is what I think of Australia Day,’ I said. My voice sounded tinny through the PA, but it was clear and loud. I was heard. I pulled the bunched-up flag from my pocket and shook it out with one hand. I squirted the contents of my water bottle on it and held it high for the crowd. Spirits burned my eyes. The only sound was the whir of the cameras – as they zoomed, and panned, and closed in around me – and my heart, pulsing in my ears.

  Holding my lighter against the dripping rag of red, white and blue, I thought of the fat businessman who’d told us to get a job, and the car that honked at the lights. I thought of the angry bogans, and the police who looked at us as though we were ants and they were the boots of destiny. But most of all I thought of the old people. My old people.

  I thumbed the flint.

  JACK’S ISLAND

  The police boat moves towards Badger Island. It enters the small bay watched over by Jack’s hut. His is the only hut on this side of the island, and the only one inhabited. Its occupation is betrayed by streaks of chimney smoke that stain the retreating
sea fog above it. The hut is nestled amongst thick, green coast wattle above a small granite cliff. It is comfortable in its isolation, just like its owner. Both are unaccustomed to being disturbed.

  The sound of approaching engines invades Jack’s dream and he wakes, unsettled. The police boat circles around his bay, arrogantly declaring its presence. It is large, white and luxurious, with tinted windows and gaudy blue lettering on its side. It looks foreign amid its surroundings of ancient lithic structures, protruding from the mirrored sea. Or perhaps it is the islands – Jack’s island in particular – that are out of place: trapped in another era and detached from the modern world.

  Naked and bleary-eyed, Jack creeps to the window and peers over the sill. He watches the boat power its way across to the jetty. The party in blue take their time to disembark and hop across the boulders before disappearing into the tunnel of overhanging ti-tree leading away from the point. Once, the mere sight of police uniforms would have seized Jack’s insides. Now, after years in isolation – years of reflection on the life he abandoned – he is impervious to their aura of fear and the threat of their authority. They are as redundant in his world as he is in theirs.

  Jack takes his time to dress before leaving the hut. He observes the visitors soundlessly from his hiding place within a thatch of dense boobialla. There are five of them: three men and two women. The men stay at the edge of Jack’s vision like ghosts. His eyes seek out the women, whom he studies with primal fascination. He sniffs desperately at the air for new scents. After years on the island, Jack has been cleansed of the pollutants that dulled his senses for much of his earlier life. He has become finely tuned to his environment. He has developed the ability to differentiate between native and foreign smells and can isolate and concentrate them in his mind.

  As the police approach his hut, Jack catches whiffs of orange peel, crusty bread, washing powder, deodorant, lanolin and engine fumes. As if in response to some inner desire, a spiral of wind delivers to him a fleeting waft of femaleness: warm and perfumed and laced with the promise of contentment. With an impulsive shudder, Jack imprints this essence into his mind, to savour for as long as possible. Such small and once-insignificant things he no longer takes for granted.

  Jack watches them leave. A white envelope on his rustic table, scattered footprints on the dusty track and an ephemeral trail in the ocean is all they leave behind.

  Jack’s eyes pass over the letter. He closes them. And he remembers.

  ~

  The police courtesy visits happened a few times a year, when the large boat from Hobart took its tour around the Bass Strait islands. When they first started visiting, Jack would entertain them, making tea that they would sip, gingerly, from his stained and chipped cups. He would offer them a leg of cold muttonbird or a sugared doughboy, which they always politely declined. After Jack’s Uncle Donnie left the island, he began to hide from unexpected visitors. He did not fear them – far from it. He was simply setting boundaries: any interaction with outsiders was on his terms, and generally only through necessity.

  He’d first come to the island in 1997, on a trip organised by a local Aboriginal organisation. Back then they’d brought large mobs of the community across to the islands to camp and explore. It was a way of returning to their roots – to the places where many of their modern families were established.

  Of all the islands they visited, Jack felt the most at home on Badger. He was fascinated to learn about his own family’s connection to the place. Above the grassy foreshore on the eastern side of the island, the camp leaders pointed out the ruins of old structures. One place, Jack discovered, had belonged to his great-grandfather, William Beeton. The remains of that hut consisted of a barely discernible granite foundation; strewn chimney bricks, darkened with soot and lichen; and a few scattered timbers. Some remnant garden vegetation survived: an agave plant, patches of naked ladies, and eggs and bacon daffodils – their appearance garish and exotic against the dullness of the dried summer grasses and native reeds. The hut faced the distant blue hills of Cape Barren Island – William’s birthplace. To the west, and a stone’s throw from Badger, was Chappell Island with the sinister, volcano-shaped mountain at its centre. Generations of the Beeton family ran muttonbird sheds there.

  Jack left the island after the trip that day knowing he would return. But it was not the serene beauty or the call of his family’s history that eventually brought him back. It was a prolonged bout of depression following the death of his infant son. In the darkness of those days, the solitude that came with the island’s remoteness and isolation seemed like a slender ray of light. And for a long time, it was the desolate and lonely characteristics of the island that resonated deeply with the broken man.

  Occasionally, planes would land on the airstrip, mainly because the absentee sheep farmer flew across from Flinders Island a few times during the year, most frequently during the shearing season. Jack came to recognise the unique drone and regular misfire of the farmer’s plane and was familiar with all the planes that flew amongst the islands, and their schedules. Then one day, five years after he’d moved to the island, Jack identified the engine sound of one of the Cessnas belonging to a Launceston-based charter company. Their chief business was giving overpriced flying lessons to privileged kids. His curiosity sparked, Jack made his way to the airstrip to see his Uncle Donnie walk over the rise, shouldering a khaki duffel bag. His hair had thinned and his features had become more drawn since their last meeting, but he was still fit for his age.

  None of Jack’s other family had bothered visiting him, although they all knew where he was. The pretext for Donnie’s visit was time out from work and travel. Donnie was Jack’s great-uncle – his grandmother’s much younger brother. He’d joined the army as a teen and married soon after. Strained from the extended periods Donnie spent abroad and remaining childless, the relationship failed. Donnie spent the rest of his working life travelling South-East Asia in gas and oil jobs. The envy of many, his lifestyle was a continuous cycle of rough and opulent: oil platforms to plush hotels; hard cabin bunks to the soft and inviting beds of the local women.

  When Donnie’s stay on the island extended beyond a month, Jack became curious about his uncle’s intentions – and the real reason for his visit. He was very fond of Donnie; had anyone else just shown up like that, Jack would have run them off the island. But as time progressed, Jack began to appreciate the company. The despair that had driven him to Badger Island began to wane.

  The two men spent their days improving the hut and tending to Jack’s garden. Donnie was a keen fisherman and many a shadowy evening Jack would watch him from his garden on the cliff’s edge, fishing rod and bucket in hand, crossing the chain of mottled granite boulders that linked to a larger rocky outcrop in the corner of their sapphire cove. There, Donnie had discovered he could catch silver trevally, when the wind was barely a breath on a swollen tide. The two of them lived mostly on what they caught from the sea and could grow in Jack’s garden. Jack had become proficient with a throwing stick and, like his tribal forebears, would take an unlucky wallaby for protein when the relentless westerly winds made fishing impossible.

  In autumn, when the earthy, seasonal smell of the muttonbird colony drifted across from Chappell Island, they fashioned a crude raft from old fence posts and rusty oil drums. They paddled it across the seven hundred metres of rolling channel that separated the two islands, to harvest their yula, their muttonbirds. In the rocks of a sheltered gulch, they set a metal drum, which Donnie filled with seawater upon arrival. He lit a fire under the drum and fed it with scraps of salt-bleached driftwood he found jammed into rocky crevices and tangled amongst the seaweed at the high-water mark. High on his shoulders, Jack carried spear-loads of plump, downy muttonbird chicks in from the waving poa-fields. Together, they squeezed the amber oil from the chicks’ stomachs and threw fistfuls of grey feathers into the wind, while the waves sucked the sand from under their feet
and the mollyhawks danced in expectation.

  After the plucking, Jack would go back in the rookery and leave Donnie to dunk the birds into the scalding pot and rub them back to a soft, white skin. Just like his grandfather had shown him, on this same island, when he was a boy.

  With their quarry stashed in hessian bags, the two-man crew drift-paddled home to Badger on the retreating tide. There, they laid out their catch on makeshift racks of manuka branches to cool. In the evening, they removed the birds’ extremities and insides before rubbing them in salt and packing their flattened pale bodies into casks. Salted and brined, the muttonbirds would keep for a whole year. When the desire arose – and it regularly did – they seasoned a few of their birds with Jack’s dried herbs and ground native peppercorns. They cooked them on carved wooden skewers around beds of glowing coals. Rendered fat dripped from scores in the birds’ crisping skin onto the fire, creating a pleasant grey smoke and adding another layer of flavour to the already delicious meat.

  On such occasions, memories were aroused by the taste of their culture, and Donnie would recount stories of his childhood and Jack would listen intently.

  The older man told of visiting Badger Island as a young boy. His grandfather William would sail them across from Launceston in a wooden cutter named The Bella. It was a long, wet journey in the unpowered boat, heavily burdened by people and supplies. Accompanying Donnie was his mother and three older sisters. They all stayed with William in his tiny hut, a rough and basic wooden structure with a skillion roof and only two small rooms. Surrounding the house was a ti-tree fence and a tended garden, full of bulbs and succulents. They all slept in one bed, except for William, who had a neat crib next to the fire.