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 ZoneRebecca is sitting at her box table, when the sacking entrance to their hut is pulled back and arough voice grinds, ‘I’m looking for Witchetty.’ 65 Rebecca stands to face a man in a hat, andshe sees his confusion turn into a smirk. Panic rises in her chest, but she does not let him seeit. Raymond, standing beside her, looks carefully at this strange visitor, his lips parted. Shesteps forward.‘That’ll be Mr Forbes’, she says, speaking evenly, in accents borrowed from her post inIslington so long ago. The man looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or swear, soinstead he tips his hat back and wipes the sweating skin under its band with the back of hishand. Rebecca notices it leaves a smear across his forehead, before the hat is again pulled lowover his eyes.‘Yeah. Is he in?’‘Just a moment,’ and she twitches the curtain from his grasp to let it fall. There arefeelings in her chest she can only barely restrain from escaping in great gasps. Jack looks ather from the cot at the rear of the hut, and lays his hand on her shoulder as he stands up.‘I’ll see what he wants,’ he says, and leaves her sunken on their bed, his tall figure fillingthe door frame as he stoops slightly on his way out of the hut. Jack of course takes the job,and rides away swaying on the back of the cart with the man, to mark a line of wire andnetting across the country to sort the sheep from the dogs.Rebecca can only guess how the story is told on homestead verandahs and around longshearers’ tables:‘I asked for Witchetty, right, and she says, she says, “That’ll be Mr. Forbes.” Forbes!Christ! No white man ever called him Mr Forbes in his life!’ 6640