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 ZoneBut Mrs Forbes is in the Leighs Creek Hotel, and she has her boys, and she is painfullyavoiding the people around her. What does she imagine she sees, looking out the ground floorwindow of her room, over the wide hard track in front of the pub, beyond the white gatesbarring the drunken wanderer from the line, to the dark smooth steel tracks running away tonorth and south? What does she imagine might happen, hearing the thud and rattle of theapproaching train, knowing it is only a ticket from the neat white window under the verandahof the rectangular building opposite that stands between her and elsewhere? Does she noticethe rag tag group of children draining in a trickle on the other side of the tracks to pool aboutthe squat stone frame of the school house in the mornings; and noticing, does she imagine hersons could be amongst them? Or does she wait for a certain face, and a particular name, topropel her out of her room, or better yet, to come asking for her? Is it the eager and curiouspersonage of the travelling pastor that detains her, with promises, or hopes, or something likesympathy?During 1926, a covered wagon drawn by four aged donkeys makes its way up the center ofAustralia, visiting Aboriginal missions on the way. A scripture passage printed in largelettering on the canvas hood reads ‘Behold, I come quickly.’ Beneath it is the family of PastorErnie Kramer, a Swiss-German Lutheran engaged as an agent of the British and ForeignBible Society, and also supported by the Aborigines Friends Society. 68 Who would havethought he would make such an impression through the decades ahead?…Our mothers knew the church. They used to have a church in Mt Serle long time ago.They knew it through Mr. Kramer…I don’t know where he come from, but Mum andthem they used to tell us, ‘we used to really know the church’. Mr. Kramer used to come[and] have church with them around the campfire. 69By October that year, Kramer delivers a report of his passage through the Flinders to theSouth Australian Government’s Advisory Council of Aborigines, who decide to forward a42