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 Three: Contact Zonesloping canvas sides of his tent. He reads Kitty’s letter back, under his breath, and sees whatshe has said. With uncharacteristic blemish, he hastily writes in capital ‘H’: ‘He been teachme, He make me clean, make me happy all the time.’ 85‘It’s God, must be she’s grateful to God,’ he thinks, through his quickening breathing.April and May pass before Bill and Iris Wade return to Oodnadatta with rosy excitement ineach other and in their planned ‘honeymoon’ expedition into the Musgrave Ranges to thewest, on which Jim at last is to join them…June 1928, Granite Downs Station 100 miles west of Oodnadatta‘We have learned that a mail goes in to-morrow, so we are all seated by the fire writingwhile the smoke blinds our eyes’, 86 says Iris, perching on her camp stool and reading herreport aloud.Will, who is barely literate, is not writing, as Iris has penned, but is singing, probably tohimself. 87 Jim, it is true, has a pen in hand and paper balanced on his knees, and his head isbowed and he is silent. But he is not writing, either. It is the end of June, and he is with Willand Iris scarcely 150 miles west of Oodnadatta, and they have been there at Granite DownsStation for three weeks. 88Jim steals a glance at Iris, noticing the licking flames reflecting in her round wirespectacles. There is a crease of a frown between her brows as she re-reads her earlier report.54