2011 - Theses - Flinders University

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 ZoneLife Writing Chapter EightRam Paddock GateAdelaide, 2006‘Ron (Whyte) could tell you a lot about Aborigines in the early days’ 36 says ‘Smiler’Greenwood to whoever will hear his oral history boxed and catalogued in the storeroom ofthe Library of South Australia. Ron held his rams in the same paddock as the grove of Minerabushes which marked a traditional campsite for Adnyamathanha yuras. Located where theboundary fences of Mt Serle, Angepena and his own Burr Well met, the paddock wasaccessed by the east-west track between Copley rail siding and Wooltana station which passthrough it. A gate across the track signalled the place, and its intention. Ram Paddock Gate.Beltana, 2005Keith Nicholls told me a lot, too, over cups of strong black tea, while his sooty kettle hissedon his wood fired oven, ever ready for the next cup. He had retired from pastoral life onnearby Warraweena station, and lived in the building John Flynn designed as a nursing clinicat Beltana. When he was a boy, he travelled the track to Ram Paddock Gate with his father,Lance, who, along with being a one-armed, one-eyed, well-sinking publican, was also themailman on the eastern run.I remember Dad had the mail service out to the east side and a couple of times they[Aboriginal people at Ram Paddock Gate camp] held up the truck, the car, [saying] ‘Ohyes, we want some grog. You got some!’ Yes, anyway they were used [to it]. There were afew that used to supply them but my old man wasn’t one of them… They held up the truckyou see, when it passed through it. He used to have to go through Ram Paddock Gatewhere their old camp was, and they were all waiting at the gate. Because in those daysthey had to get out and open the gate. 3726