My Apology

Very moved by this video of Abraham Nouk's (Abe Ape) apology.

Its shameful really that he has been so fully able to express, in one short period of his life in Australia, what I have felt, thought, believed and worked towards for so long. Is it my whiteness that makes me relatively silent. I wonder how I would be seen if I were to say exactly what he has said but as a white person. What stops me? Somehow I feel he has the right to take the moral high ground enough to do this but I don't. Maybe this is diminishing his sincere and wonderful apology. I think that all of these thoughts are just an indication of the complexity of whiteness and the way I shrink from my own privilege while at the same time inhabit it so blindly. This brings to mind the prose piece I wrote when National Sorry Day first came into being. My first reaction to it was anger. I was outraged by what I felt were the well meaning but empty apologies that people were speaking into the ether, not directed to any Aboriginal person because most of the people saying sorry didn't even know an Aboriginal person.
It was read out on ABC radio and then eventually in parliament by Senator Nick Bolkus at the closing of the Wik debate which was the longest debate in Australian parliamentary history.

In Response to National Sorry Day

I haven’t signed the sorry book. It seemed to me to be too small a thing to do to express a very big feeling.

My husband was one of the stolen children.

He was a year younger than me.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that when I was a child of seven wearing party dresses and carrying my suitcase to school, he was regularly being beaten with a strop strap at a children’s home and running away by hanging underneath a train all the way from Sale in Gippsland to Richmond station.

I’m sorry that his mother died in 1988, the year of the bicentennial, at the age of 46 and I am lucky enough to still have the company of my mother at the age of 75.

I’m sorry that I am about to embark on my 8^th year of tertiary education and he had to study for his HSC from books he begged for in jail.

I’m sorry that he was nine years old when his mother was eligible to vote, having some small say in a future on his behalf, yet my parents took that right for granted for all of their life and mine.

Most of all I am sorry that I couldn’t ever know his pain or do anything that would take it away. 

He used to say that he wished someone from the government would apologise for the mess they had made of his life.

I am sorry he died a lonely and painful death with a noose around his neck in 1993, the International Year of the Worlds Indigenous Peoples

Megan Evans 1996

Please watch Abe's video. It is what we all need to do.
I now fully appreciate Sorry Day as an important and powerful event for both black and white Australians.

Rejections - sometimes hard to take

I'm really disappointed that I didn't get a State Library fellowship. It seemed so perfect as the next thing to do. I will just have to keep researching on my own.
Rejections are a part of the game for artists and every artist knows that but sometimes you REALLY REALLY want something and when it doesn't come through it is harder to take than other things.
I have so much material to research I was hoping that the time spent in the Library would focus me. It is hard to make myself sit and do the research I know I have to do when the studio and the joy of making is like a siren calling me away from the computer.

I have started work in my home studio this week.

It feels so special working here. It used to be my Mums flat while I was able to look after her at home. It took me 3 years before I felt able to have it as my studio.
I am doing work here that I need a dust free environment for, and the River studio is space where I can experiment and make a mess.
I noticed this week that I have moved away from the images of my great grandparents and am working only on images of myself. At the moment I am doing three pieces that involve sticking thousands of pins in my face. Understandably I guess, I am feeling a little blue. A strange anxiety has settled in me that I am sure is a part of this work.
I have a big book on Louise Bourgeois on my table and find myself looking at her work every day.

New Studios - New work

I have moved studios. The neglect of my blog is due to the tired muscles and sore joints from having lifted things that are too heavy for me.
I now have two studios which feels a little extravagant however it means that I have a space at home and a smaller space at River Studios.

This new space is a large square white walled space which calls for new things, new ideas. It is actually next door to my previous space and even though I was reluctant to leave my big space I like the feeling of having emptied everything out and creating a space for experimentation. I have taken most of the furniture to the studio at home where I will work on it in a less dusty environment.

In the process of moving I screwed up an old print and out of that seemed to have made some new work. Not sure yet how it will progress but I like the distorted images.

More pics of new spaces to come.

Reconciliation - What IS that?

I went to a reconciliation breakfast in Fitzroy yesterday arranged by my wonderful friend Siu Chan. It was at Charcoal Lane that somewhat contentious reconstruction of the old Aboriginal Health Service in Gertrude St Fitzroy. I stayed the night before at Maggie Fooke's Arts Hotel in George St thanks again to Siu's arrangement and Maggie's generosity. I hadn't walked up Gertrude St at 7am for 20 years or more. Whenever I go to Fitzroy these days I feel melancholic because of the ghosts everywhere. I see so many people who are not there now. Not literally, but my memories are so powerful that I am hardly present myself as I am returned to an earlier time while standing in the same place. Les's family live large in these memories but also many other people. I remember Uncle Trevor, who I always loved for the story about him holding up the art supply shop with a paint brush stuck up his jumper. One that he had taken off the shelves. I remember having breakfast with Les at the Burek shop just next door to the Royal Hotel, that at one time was owned by Uncle Eugene who won it in a two up game. I remember being in the Royal and being abused by an angry Aboriginal man and being gently told by Les that he was someone who had had a hard time of it. I understood that Les didn't need to stand up for my honour as I was already the one with the power just by virtue of my whiteness. I remember walking the streets at night singing Patsy Cline songs, looking for Les, who had been speeding for too long and needed to be guided home to bed. I remember visiting the uncles in the park beneath the flats. I remember the first time I met Les's mother, Gwen Lovett, on the 17th floor of the high rise. She hadn't been out of the flat for many years due to her agoraphobia, set off by an attack in the lifts. I remember going on marches in NAIDOC week. We all met in Gertrude St, outside the Health Service and in a tight little pack walked through the city streets shouting Land Rights Now. Les, Mille, Bear and many others were walking down Gertrude St with me yesterday morning. They came into Charcoal Lane and were amazed by the fancy restaurant with young Aboriginal people serving food and the pack of people there to support the sale of a beautiful photograph of Jack Charles by Rob McNicols to raise money for an Aboriginal music festival. As Kyle Vander Kuyp gave the address, after a welcome to country, I began to cry. I couldn't stop. I had to leave. I was both moved but also deeply sad about all those people who wouldn't see the changes they had participated in. I wished they could be there.

The most poignant thing about this for me, on reflection, is how this must be for Aboriginal people who are all surrounded by so much loss and death. So many tragic circumstances. So much bereavement.
I sometimes wake in the morning and feel the deep well of sadness and grief, that is mostly still water, ripple and threaten to tip over the lip that holds it in, beginning a flood. I am surrounded by support in the very structure of society that I belong to. I can go and get a coffee, call a friend, go to work or the studio, a multiple of ways to hold back the flood. Not so for many Aboriginal people who stay home to avoid the feelings of rejection that are either out there, or imagined as being out there, based on past experiences.

I came across a Youtube clip that provides the best explanation for reconciliation I have ever heard.
It is 17 minutes long but worth every minute. If you are Australian or live in Australia you should watch it and send it around to everyone you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LP4GSk0Y0

Les at Trades Hall - Photo by Marina Baker

Dust Storm (booroomugga) - from Burrowye to Booroomugga

Before Patrick John Kelly came to the country of the Wangaaypuwan (wongaibon) people he bought a property on the murray called Burrowye Station. I am currently following up whose land this was but it turns out I may know someone who is the descendant of these people. More to come on this.
After coming back to Moonahculla from Cobar and spending another few nights there, including going to the Blues and Roots festival curtesy of Cecily, I left to take the rented SUV back to Melbourne. However, I couldn't resist taking a detour to see if I could find Burrowye.
I drove east from Deniliquin to Albury and after stopping at a tourist info area I found the right road to take.
It didn't look very far on the map but turned out to be much longer due to the windy road. As the sun dipped in the sky I was plagued by thoughts that I was stupid to try to find this place which would most likely only consist of a road sign which, when I found it, I would have to turn back from and drive in the dark risking kangaroos on the road.
I pressed on regardless.
I did find the sign and the station. It was nestled in a valley surrounded by beautiful hills on the banks of the Murray river.

As I stood photographing the front gate thinking how lucky I was to have found it, my luck increased four fold as a farmer drove towards me in an old blue tractor just like the toy one I had as a child. He was James Houston the great grandson of the man who bought Burrowye at the turn of the 20th century. He graciously invited me to meet his very pregnant wife Charlotte who he said was interested in the history of the property. When I stepped into their house I immediately knew they were not the stereotype of the crusty old farmer I had expected to find. As it turned out, after some very rapid and excited (by me anyway) conversations, they were also artists and had both worked up north on Aboriginal communities and new many of the issues I was dealing with in my project. My attempt to excuse myself and plan to head back down the windy road to Albury was interrupted by an invitation to stay the night. Unexpectedly several hours later, I was sitting on the floor by the fire, drinking tea from bone china and eating a delicious desert.  I then slept in  a bed with the most beautiful old linen, presumable from James grandmother's day. Aside from their most wonderful country hospitality, I felt that I had connected in an unusual way with people who thought very similarly to me. They also gave me names of books and copies of photographs and details of the property which included PJ Kelly. I was also invited back to stay in their cottage which they are planning - synchronicity plus - on setting up as an artist residency! Obviously someone was guiding me on this trip from start to finish.

James and Charlotte Houston

They also had a delightful son named Joe. In the morning before I left I was driven up to the top of the nearby hill to see an extraordinary view. I was reminded of the colonial saying in regard to land ownership 'as far as the eye can see'. 

Evidently Patrick John Kelly had disliked the 'claustrophobic' effect of the mountains after coming from his fathers property in Sth Australia so he moved to northern NSW. I was entranced by those same mountains especially in the morning as the mist slowly rose.

View from the original orchard

James and Charlotte told me about a massacre they had been told about directly on the other side of the Murray from their property. I wondered if Patrick Kelly had been involved but it appears it happened 30 years before he arrived. However he would have been aware of it in the local memory. 
When I left I went looking for the spot. James said it was unmarked but it was near a place called Dora Dora. The only thing left at Dora Dora was the remains of an old pub.
As I drove down the road they had directed me to I stopped to look at a lone eagle circling in one spot. It was a small creek and a valley between two hills. The eagle continued circling and I took photos. It seemed significant. I decided that it was a sign that I was in the right spot. Another two turns in the road an there was the Dora Dora pub.

This journey has been amazing, yielding such rich stories and wonderful material to now uncover. I feel more at peace than I did before I went. My conclusion about this is that nothing my people did is unconfrontable, even if it is the worst of all things. Even if they were involved in massacres, participated in the worst of atrocities, (which by their very presence at the time, they would have either been directly involved in, or have turned a blind eye to, playing golf while their fellow human beings were ripped from their land and way of life) I am able to confront it and own it. This is far better than avoiding these issues and pretending that it's all in the past. That way is full of troubled shadows and furtive glances away from the direct gaze of my fellow human beings who happen to be Aboriginal.

This is also just the beginning. My next stage of work will be profoundly influenced by this experience. My fingers are already twitching.

The ghosts of Booroomugga

After spending time in the Cobar Museum and confronting the facts about how the traditional owners were treated in the lifetime of my grandmother, being moved off their lands under the extraordinary title of 'dispersal', we were able to get the phone number of the current owners of Booroomugga and arrange to go out there that same afternoon. It was an 40k trip back towards Nyngan and then 30K off the road into the flat red dirt country that I remembered as a child. The first cattle gird had the following sign on it which reminded us that this land was still off limits to the uninvited.

We arrived at the home paddock close to dusk when that glorious golden light coated the landscape with a sentimental glow. The Greers were very friendly and helpful, providing me with papers about the history of the property that had been prepared by a real estate agent who had done some research into its history. It stated that P J Kelly had owned a property called Burrowye on the Murray before coming to Cobar region in 1882.. The original homestead had been burned down (apparently on purpose by a previous owner) but the wool shed was still standing. It had been clad with corrugated iron but the original timber frame and boards still lined the inside. They took us over to have a look. It was a big shed with 20 stands for shearers.

As we were leaving it was suggested that we stop by the Kelly family headstone where Meg Kelly's (the last surviving family member to live on the property) ashes were buried. Then the ghosts stories came out. The Greer's believed that Meg haunted the place. They gave several examples of locked doors opening and even a car being shoved hard from the rear with no apparent explanation just when it was near the head stone. Then David Greer's daughter asked had we noticed the old wardrobe door swinging back and forth when we were in the wool shed with not a breath of wind to move it.
Somehow it didn't surprise me. I have been compelled to recreate something of this family even to the extent of constructing a replica of Isabella's dress and jewellery from an old photograph.

We returned to Cobar as the sun went down. My head was fizzing with ideas and possibilites. I felt as though I had finally come home but not to a place, rather to an idea that had been buried underneath many layers of avoidance and misdirected guilt. It is as though taking responsibility for what my people were and have done has freed me to really look at it, uncover it, discover it and own it in a way that allows me to be fully who I am. An Australian of Anglo Celtic origin, born on Wurrundjerri land. I know that this is just the beginning and there are many more skins of the onion to peel back but I am excited rather than daunted.

Colonial Ancestors - Road Trip Stage 2 - A day in Cobar

Day two took us to Cobar. The Cobar Museum holds several objects donated from Booroomugga including a buggy and a food storage house which is the base of a large tree. It is presented as the mystery of the museum, one that people are invited to guess what it was used for.  Also many things that I inherently recognised as wares from the 'olden days' including a saddle bag which was similar to one that Meg Kelly had given me on my previous trip to Booroomugga.

The best material in the museum for me was the section about the Wangaaypuwan (Wongaibon) people who were the Aboriginal people in the Cobar region. Their language is Ngiyambaa which broadly translates a 'language in general', universal language' or 'worldspeak'
The Wangaaypuwan people were the largest group of Ngiyambaa speakers, deriving this name from their word for 'no', 'wangaay'. There were three subgroups that derived their names from the surrounding landscapes. One of these groups is the Pilaarrkiyalu (belah tree) people and their decendants, who lived in the Keewong - Cowra tank area.

Belah Trees

A deeply moving dedication in the museum said it all.
'For the people who said:
"Ngiyanuna paluhaarra wangaay mayi wiiyakal Ngiyambaa ngiyarapa"
"When we die, there will be nobody left who can speak Ngiyampaa"

The people with ties to the Cobar area now live in widely scattered areas in NSW from Bourke to Brewarrina to Wilcannia and Broken Hill, down to Menindee, Albury, Ivanhoe, Condoblin, Griffith and over to Dubbo. The 'Dispersal Policy' (which I am now researching) resulted in Wangaaypuwan people being resettled to other areas.
* this material is directly quoted from the museum display

The Dispersal Policy

The Cowra Tank was the last major settlement of Wongaibon people on their traditional lands prior to their dispersal to Menindee in 1933

Cowra Tank

Cowra Tank Mission School