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Black Swan

A Koorie Woman's Life

Allen & Unwin

Routines

EILEN WANTS TO BEGIN her story with Lake Tyers. Home. It's her place: where she was born; where her people are buried. She feels she is nothing without Lake Tyers.

She has painted more than one picture of the Mission. Her paintings are filled with brilliant colours from her imagination, yet are still dominated by the traditions of Kurnai art. The use of space and design in her work is determined by patterns that she learned from her mother and her mother's mother, the basket weaver Thelma Carter. There is only minimal use of dots in the art of the Victorian ancestors. Lines, curves, circles and shadows representative of culture and Country dominate.

Eileen's first painting of Lake Tyers is a bird's-eye view of the lake with the landmass upon which the Mission once sat jutting out into it. She has painted it from her memory and her dreams. She has made the water in the lake a fully saturated blue and unnaturally opaque. It is not shimmering or fluid, for its purpose is to stun the viewer with its declaration of place and shape. The arms of land intruding onto that space are equally stylised and powerful because the colours she uses to depict them are complementary to the brilliant blue of the lake. All are shaded variations of orange moving from ochre to brown and black, and tinted variations from sandy beige to white — the hues of her people's artwork from the beginning of time. The design on each arm of land is influenced by those made on possum skin cloaks by the artist's ancestors. First there is an outline of beige sand, then a flat white demarcation line next to a broad band of black upon which are laid an almost formal row of trees, each denoted by two white lines on a shadow of brown, topped by a semicircle. These protective trees lined up all along the perimeter of the landmass create a complex interior shape that she leaves opaque brown, almost ochre.

Even though there is no representation of the actual Mission, with its rows of houses, carefully placed gardens, outhouses, school, church and manager's buildings, this painting seems to signify the outline and shape of Mission routine. The strict order of forms represents the patterns of everyday activities that are imprinted on Eileen's soul — fixed, immovable, inviolable patterns.

'I was born in 1948,' she says. 'So these things I remember were in the fifties. Maybe this painting represents that time. I have to think about it.'

Even though she couldn't hear them, Eileen remembers bells controlled the daily lives of all the people who lived at Lake Tyers Mission Station. It could be that a bell rang early in the morning to wake the men, but since she never heard it, she isn't sure. Something must have awoken them before it was light to get them out of bed and down to the cows, as they were trained to do. The men were rostered so not all of them had to rise early all of the time, but she imagines they all did. There were other bells that she did hear even if the sound was muffled in her mostly deaf ears: the one at eight o'clock for school, the one at four for rations and another one on Sundays for church. She is not sure if the ringing of the day-bell came from up at the manager's office, but she remembers the Sunday bell came from the church steeple. She could hear that bell because it reverberated through the very earth.

The church bell rang on Wednesdays as well for the evening get-togethers where they showed religious films and taught lessons about Jesus. Mr Henry was the minister, who lived across the lake and rowed over from Dungunna on Wednesdays and Sundays. Deaconess Nancy drove her car from Lakes Entrance to teach religious instruction to the children with Mr Henry on Wednesdays in school. After school, they stayed on for an evening session to include the whole community. In the 1950s not everybody went to those sessions or to church on Sundays either as they had in the 1870s. She remembers Poppa Dodge went and Connie Edwards and Aunty Julia, and all the Harrisons, and, of course, all the kids, too. The kids were not allowed to miss. Mr Henry would call around and collect the kids so they had no choice. That went for church on Sundays as well. She remembers she didn't really care about the church stuff, just that they were all together. That felt good to her.

When she was young and growing up secure and innocent at Lake Tyers, Eileen didn't think about the idea that the bells controlled her life in an unnatural way. 'I didn't like them or dislike them,' she says. 'They just were part of life. After all, there were no clocks and no one ever had a watch. No wonder there were bells!' She imagines the elders like her grandmother, Thelma Carter, might have grumbled about bells that set an unnatural rhythm to a day and a week and made them remember a time when there were no bells, but bells seemed natural to Eileen since she had lived with Mission rhythms all her life, and so had her mother, who had been born there just like she had been.

Because she wasn't so good at hearing, she never heard her dad get up and probably clatter about the place, making sure he had the fire going before he set off for the cows. She never heard her mum either, getting ready to make johnnycakes or damper for breakfast if she had the flour. It was her older sister, Viv, her best friend, who woke her up at probably about seven each morning so she could drag her clothes on and stumble down to the dairy in time to collect the morning's milk. She wasn't the only one to do it. Kids from all the other settlement houses that looked just like hers came along with their billies to collect the milk from their fathers or grandfathers or uncles who were on milking duty that morning and who would dole it out, some surly, some laughing and cheeky. She didn't have to collect the milk every day, either. She could take turns with her sisters. She had nine of them and one brother, but she was second oldest, except when Viv went off pea picking with Nan and Pa Carter in the summer, then she was the oldest, and so she had to take the two billies for the family's milk more often than not.

'We got two billies' worth because we were such a large family. I had to be at the dairy by half past seven or miss out and in the winter it was cold. Too cold for a kid to be out. And dark. I would wish I was in bed.'

There were two small bedrooms in the plain little box-shaped house her family lived in. Maybe they weren't the same houses that Reverend John Bulmer and the Kurnai built in the 1870s when they were setting up the mission station, but they look very similar to the ones in the photographs from that time. Eileen's house was very small for a big family with only the two tiny rooms for all those kids, but she didn't mind: 'There was an outer toilet ... a dunny, you know. It was in a little shed. Inside the house was one bedroom, a door, another bedroom. I am trying to think ... All of us kids slept in one big bedroom. We had to go out the back door.' In fact, they all slept head to toe across three beds in her room and two beds in the other. She shared with the younger ones and Viv with the older ones. Before too long, her sister Thelma would be gone — sent to an institution because her ongoing physical ill-health could not be treated at the Mission. That meant Viv could sleep alone in her own bed, even though she always left a space for her missing sister. Eileen's mum and dad had their bed in the kitchen behind a partition near the fire. In the winter, they made a bed there for the very little ones so they wouldn't get cold.

When she came back into the house with the milk each morning, the kitchen was always warm because of the big fireplace. There was no other room, no lounge room or dining room, just a big warm kitchen where everything happened. She remembers that when she was very young, they had only a fireplace and no stove. It had hooks where her mother hung the billy for hot water and the camp oven and the pots. If there was no flour for johnnycakes in the morning, her mum would say to one of them, 'Go next door and ask Nan if she has any flour.' If Nan didn't have any then they'd go to the next house and the next one until they got some. No shame. Just the way it was. They were all related, anyhow. All the families lived together. That's how it should be.

Her house was in the middle of the family group. Around them was Aunty Ella's house first and then Aunty Lou's — mother's and daughter's houses right next to each other. Then there was Aunty Phyllis and Uncle Charlie in their house. Her grandparents lived right next door to her house. Further off there were other groups of families. She picks up an aerial photo of the Mission from the kitchen table where it lies with all the other photos and papers she has gathered for this story-telling and studies it, trying to remember all the families and where they lived. There were the Moffats, Mobournes, Turners, Edwards, Hoods ...

In Eileen's memory no one ever lacked for food at 'the Mish', even if the kids asked for more at meal times; but kids are always hungry. At her house, because they were such a large family, they sometimes ran short of staples like flour, but someone would always have some to lend until ration day at the end of the week. Her dad would bring home cream from the dairy. 'We made our own butter at the Mish. Dad made the butter. There was cream straight off the bucket. Aw, nice and fresh. You don't taste it like that nowadays. We used to watch Dad make the butter. There was a round thing that he moved up and down. And then he used a paddle to make it square. He did that as part of his work on the farm.' He doled out the butter to everyone. That was his job on at least two days of the week. Other days he had to bring in the cattle and sheep marked by the manager, Mr Rule at first and then Mr Miles, for butchering.

The men were paid, but she never knew how much until she looked at the lists in the archive in North Melbourne. Anything you might ever want to know about the Mission — who lived there, what they did, who they did it with, and lots more — is recorded and held at the archive. She found out from the lists carefully written in a leather-bound ledger that the most her father ever made for at least sixty hours of work was three pounds. And he worked hard. Eileen remembers going up to the butcher shop to watch her dad cut up the beasts. He doled out the meat three times a week — all of it, including brains, tongue and liver. Maybe that's what the four o'clock bell was for, to remind people to get up to the shop to collect their meat.

On Fridays at five, all people went with their sacks to collect the rations up at the office: they would hold their bags open while Mrs Rule, who always smiled, and then later Mrs Miles, who never smiled, measured out the flour, tea, sugar and sago for each family and placed it in the bag. Maybe there were other things like rice and oats; Eileen can't remember. One thing she does remember for sure is that sometimes they got apples and oranges in the ration. She also remembers Mrs Miles handing out big blocks of Velvet soap and loaves of bread that Jackie Rule brought in from town on the back of his truck. By the time the Mileses were managing the place, the Rules lived on a farm outside the boundary gate to the Mission and so they helped supply the rations for the people. In a way, they never really left the place. There was a little short bloke named Mr Hall who was there for a while before the Mileses came, but Eileen doesn't remember much about him. The manager and his wife were important. They kept the place in order and decided what time things happened and who got what. Handing out rations was especially important, and no one but the manager and his wife doled them out. The Rules were kind, but Eileen wasn't so sure about the Mileses.

She remembers organising the kids — all her sisters and one brother — to help their mother carry the rations home late on a Friday afternoon. That wasn't the only food they got, of course. Besides, meat and milk, there was also a large vegetable patch behind the manager's office where the old men — the elders — worked. They tended the farm gardens because they were more experienced with growing vegetables and things like that. They grew turnips, pumpkins, cabbages, onions, peas, beans, potatoes, carrots, silverbeet, tomatoes and lettuce, and doled them out evenly to everybody. Eileen realises now they were lucky to have so much healthy food, but she remembers it never really stretched far enough at their house with their large family. Of course, they never went without. If family couldn't help them, her father would go out and catch rabbits or fish to make up for any lack. They ate mostly stews and rabbit soup, but on Sundays they had a big feed after church with a roast and plenty of vegies.

After breakfast, Viv and Eileen had plenty to do before the bell rang to mark the beginning of school. They had to get the other kids ready for the day. They had to tidy the bedrooms and sweep the floors, bring in the water from the tank outside and hang it over the fire in a billy to boil for washing the dishes. There was no running water in the Mission houses, nor any sinks or bathtubs. The girls had to help their mother wash the dishes in a basin on the big table that stood in the middle of the kitchen, but first they had to wash themselves and all the girls for school inspection. When they were finished with the washing up, they had to scrub that big table spotless. Eileen remembers that the most onerous task she had to do was wash the clothes and hang them out on the barbed-wire line to dry. But she didn't have to do that before school. Instead she had to run off early, before the others, up to the dispensary to get her ears done so she could hear what the teachers were saying in the classroom. Every day Mrs Miles would be waiting for her with a syringe and warm water to flush out her ears. She thought Eileen wasn't really deaf but rather was too lazy to listen, and that maybe this would teach her to pay attention as well as get rid of any infection that might be in those ears. She was wrong; Eileen was deaf. Mrs Miles had to apologise much later, when they finally got a specialist in who confirmed she really was deaf. Meanwhile, it was a painful and humiliating routine for Eileen to go through day after day, and she has never forgotten it.

School was a part of the Mission routine that Eileen didn't mind, but it was the task of washing the clothes after school that got her down. There were so many of them in her family that the laundry had to be done any time there was promise of a clear day. Her mother would get her started and she would try to get her sisters to help, but it was her job, and while her mum was cooking dinner for all the hungry mob she would be rubbing her wrists raw with the scrubbing against the washboard. Like everybody, she had to wash the clothes outside in a 44-gallon drum cut sideways. It sat over a fire that heated up the water to boiling. Her mum would help to get the fire going and cart the water if she had time, but usually it was just Eileen.

'I knew how to make fires and chop wood. The tub for the water sat on stones over a fire in a hole in the ground. There were steel bars set across the hole to hold the tub over the fire. Once it was hot I had to get the water out and put it in another tub to wash the clothes and scrub them before putting the clothes in the big tub for rinsing and boiling. Then I would have to get them out of there and ring them out and hang them up.'

It was a lot for a young girl to do before she was allowed to go and play, but she wasn't the only kid who had to do chores. In every family all the kids had their work to do. Sometimes she complained, just like all kids do, but all she got for her pains was a whack. Or her mum might throw a shoe at her or her dad might give her a kick up the backside or pull her ear. 'Get in here, you!' they'd call. 'Don't you cheek me!' Punishments were short and sharp, and no one held a grudge.

The one routine at the Mission that Eileen reckons had the most telling and long-term effect on her was the inspection. Inspection was on Mondays and Fridays, she is pretty sure. 'Yes, that's it: the first day and the last day.' Late in the afternoon the manager's wife — Eileen remembers Mrs Miles' inspections most clearly — would come around to all the houses to see how well they were being looked after. This was a Mission routine that had been going on since 1864, before they even got all the Mission houses built and when most of the people there were still camped in mia-mias at the lake's edge and would sit cross-legged on the ground out in the open to hear Reverend Bulmer's sermons on a Sunday.

The Mission was established in 1861 by the Central Board for the Colony of Victoria. It was part of what was then 'the most comprehensive reserve and rationing system in nineteenth-century Australia'. A scheme of management for these reserves was envisaged where the Aborigines in the colony would be trained as 'domestics and farm labourers', and an attempt would be made to 'remake' them into 'Christianised' citizens for their own good. Back then, most white people, at least those in government, assumed that the few Aboriginal people who were left throughout the colony were as unruly and innocent as children. Thus they made a set of instructions for the management and regulation of the reserves, and Mission managers were expected to abide by them. Inspection was to be a daily occurrence in the beginning, rather than twice a week as it was in Eileen's time.

Eileen remembers that all the girls and women would have to be there for inspection and they would have to stand outside their houses waiting for Mrs Miles to approach as she did her rounds. Before inspection time there would be a mad flurry of activity in each house to get it ready. Eileen remembers they had to use phenol when they scrubbed the house down to make everything smell nice. Now she thinks there is nothing nice about the smell of phenol! They had to scrub the floors with a brush on their hands and knees. She remembers she did that for her mother whenever she was pregnant. 'And she was pregnant all the time!'

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Excerpted from Black Swan by Carolyn Landon, Eileen Harrison. Copyright © 2011 Carolyn Landon and Eileen Harrison. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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