White Lives in a Black Community: The lives of Jim Page and Rebecca Forbes in the Adnyamathanha communityTracy SpencerVolume Three Appendices: Creative Life WritingSection C: Contact ZoneChun-chunk! the picture ripples as Jack’s stone turns lazily on its way to the depths of thepool. ‘It’s just us here, here for a swim. Old Fred’s cousins,’ he calls out. He hands the boysa stone each and nods to Rebecca to get one, too. ‘Throw it in, just to say hello. Nothingscary here, it’s just the right way.’Chunk, chunk, chunk. Yah! Splshh! Rebecca’s husband and sons are whooping in thewater, and she already has her shoes off and placed neatly beside each other on a large flatrock. She wades into the water while her skirts billow around her, until her boys pull herover. She floats on her back, watching the clouds burn off in the hot, blue sky, feeling thedust and sweat slough off her skin and clothes. She does feel better.They lunch on juicy white wityaris and fat alda roasted on a small fire and washed downwith billy tea, while their clothes dry where they are spread out on rocks or over low bushes.‘Why don’t we just stay here for a little while?’ she asks Jack.‘It’s nice, eh? Good now with water in it. Must have been rain a little while back. But no,we can’t stay right here. See?’ and he points to the tracks on the sand. ‘Sheep come in here todrink at evening. Those station men get angry if you scare the sheep away from their water.Maybe shoot at you. Some of them don’t like you camping around their stations. That’s whywe’ll go to Mt Serle, get some work there, some rations, camp with that big mob. They got anice creek, too …’ His voice trails off as he watches a willy wagtail fussing at the watersedge. ‘Maybe better get going, then,’ he says with a small frown, and Rebecca reluctantlygathers up the clothes.They camped instead at Nguthunanga Mai Ambatanha, a strange pink-and-yellow moundrising suddenly from the ash-coloured ground. ‘Call it Damper Hill, eh?’ Jack called over his14
shoulder. ‘Got to dig a soak here, that’s all it’s got,’ he says, getting to work in a narrowcreek. He talks, as he digs, and the boys scratch handfuls of sand from the hole with him.‘This is a woman’s place, a good story I’ll tell these yakartis tonight. ‘Bout them kids wentoff in the bush, and split up and get lost, inni? Not you, eh?’ Jack chides his sons, ‘And thatspirit Ngami, their mother, she still camps here, and you see her fire glowing at first light.’ 17Later, when their fire casts dancing shadows on the flanks of the little hill, he tells thestory. ‘…That Ngami looking for her children, and the little bell bird sings out for her tofollow.’ Jack glances at Rebecca and sees her relaxed, watching him. He continues. ‘So shesings and makes steps up that other hill, and climbs up to have a look for them kids.’ She seesJack’s thin chest push forward as he takes a breath.‘Wayanha yanarungaVakuvaku winmirimanda.’Rebecca’s eyes flick from the flames to his face, and then back again.‘Wayanha yanarunga …’‘Vakuvaku …’ joins Rebecca, loud enough to hear her voice above his, above the rustle ofbreeze in the wattles, and the crackling of twigs breaking in the fire.‘… win-miri-manda,’ adds Jack, smiling. ‘She found that boy asleep under the shadow ofWayanha. Like these ones, inni?’ he finishes, softly. 18‘Mmm,’ says Rebecca, as the night seeps into her pores the way the waterhole had.Rebecca thinks she was still dreaming when she wakes to surreal strips of fire and gold racingalong the opposite hillside. They don’t glow, these hills, they shine, and she can’t keep hereyes off them. By the time they have packed up camp, and the sun has started climbing thesky, the tones are subdued a little, but Rebecca is alert now to watch for miracles in this15
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‘Ah, so it could supply the “na
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supply of every need [by] God who h
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Grote St, Adelaide, May 1929Jim Pag
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draws breath accounting for the cus
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Gerard does not seem to notice. ‘
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een a journalist, collecting tales
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Australia. Prayer is needed that th
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Works Cited(Secretary), JH Sexton.
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2 South Australia Dorothy Tunbridge
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26 Education, The Adnyamathanha Peo
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54 Clara Brady, Transcript of Inter
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84 Ian Buckley, Conversation with I
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122 Mission, 'Constitution of the U