2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Angepena years before, amongst his cluttered memorabilia of the north. As always, I wastrying to picture the past, trying to see it in order to think I could know it.‘What were the houses made of?’ I asked.‘Oh mainly wurlies, you know, made out of brush and that sort of thing.’‘Did they use canvas at all?’‘Oh probably used a bit of old canvas or anything they could get. They lived veryprimitive style those days.’‘Would people, were they wearing clothes in those days?’ I asked, wondering what‘primitive’ meant.‘Oh yeah, they were wearing clothes, but mainly clothes that had been sent up to them bythe various charities. Or some of the station people gave them clothes or pipes. They used tolove getting a pipe: the old girls – ladies - used to love smoking a pipe as well as the men! Haha… Plug tobacco, comes in cake, a hard cake and you’d have to pare it off with apocketknife then grind it up in your hand, in the palm of your hand, then put it in the pipe… Inever smoked it but it was pretty powerful.’ I smiled, imagining old Rachel and her pipe.31