2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Life Writing Chapter TenJim and the UAMSouth Australian Government Archives, Adelaide, 2003I love the archives. In the muted room, I peered into boxes where papers lay coyly folded andrubbing together. There was a seduction in written archives which so easily spreadthemselves open before me in black, white and sepia, promising to tell me that ‘this is how itwas’. Later, when stories lay slick and quiet in plastic sleeves in my lever arch files, besidetranscripts of gossip that knew them better than they knew themselves, I clasped the bulkyfolders to my chest and whispered ‘In this is the Word of God.’ Somewhere.There was the very letter that Vivian Turner wrote to the Chief Protector of Aborigines onDecember 1st 1928, just after finalising the local distribution of the Christmas edition of theAustralian Aborigines Advocate. I imagined the stylish spinster pushing her round wirerimmedglasses high on her nose, writing to Mr A. F. (Francis) Garnett, Protector ofAborigines,‘to draw your attention to the natives camping on the South-East portion of the Burr WellStation, near Copley, leased by Messes Coles and Whyte. The natives own several donkeyteams for their work of wool-carting, and we understand that they and their animals arerather a burden on the station-owners, as there is no special reserve for them.’ 110She has appended a hand drawn map showing an odd rectangle bedded between Mr Snell’slease on Angepena, Mr Greenwood’s on Mt Searle (the spelling like the land was unsettled atthis time), Mr Waterhouse on Maynards Well, and of course Messrs Coles and Whyte on63