Location - Halls Creek, Western Australia
Written - November 2007
[Publishers rejected this one, one sent back a note saying I’d need to spell out the politics more clearly. I was trying to write about the humanity in approaching a situation with the complete absence of politics, and the pitfalls of previous political ‘solutions.’ Oh well.]
We don’t have a written permit to be on these lands. Amy left a message on the answering machine to say we’re coming, with no response. I’d rather have the piece of paper in my hand. I know little of community etiquette, or law. I enter Bayulu community as bewildered as Captain Cook, the aerial of our Holden waving in the heat like a sailless mast. Gravel crunches beneath the tyres. We don’t speak. We’re here on a mission.
Beer cans frame the dirt track, glittering monuments to fallen soldiers.
No-one. There’s no-one around, as if the locals have melted into the earth, their blood giving colour to the sands of the Kimberley. It’s 42 degrees. The only signs that anyone has ever braved these lands are the hollow car-wrecks, and the crooked homes made of corrugated iron, and weatherboard.
Bayulu. It sounds like ‘bay-loo.’ Fifteen kilometres south of Fitzroy Crossing. A whitefella in Fitzroy saw Amy take a 2-litre wine cask from the car – supply we picked up from our home town, Halls Creek. ‘You could sell that down the street for two hundred bucks,’ he said. Larger wine casks have been banned throughout the Kimberley for some time. The old-timers still wince at memories of towns were under the grim shade of the Coolabah.
Recently, the laws have been further tightened, banning all grog over 2.7% alcohol content from Fitzroy, which limits sales to light beer. I’d almost expected to arrive in Bayulu to a Rousseauian vision of happy families picnicking beneath the trees, and kids splashing in the river. All their problems having been washed away by some divine rain of policy.
We park outside what might be the office. I knock on the rusted iron door. Nothing. I roll a cigarette and wonder what to do next. A Rottweiler sniffs about in the yellow grass. I walk around the side of the building and see a man on his porch.
‘G’day, how’s it goin’?’ I ask. ‘Is the office open?’
He looks at me a moment with large eyes. ‘Nah, boss, you gotta light?’
I spark him up. ‘We’re looking for someone who’s in charge. One of the elders, maybe?’
‘All dem mob gone inna town,’ he says. ‘Dunno when they come back boss, maybe try the house over demways.’ He points the way with his cigarette.
We set out on foot, taking a crooked path through the garbage. Food tins, tangled metal, beer cans that have been crushed underfoot. Rusted bike-frames. A doll’s leg, abandoned in the bulldust. It reminds me of Cambodia. This isn’t the Australia I know. Until now, this Australia has been hidden from me.
The screen door to the house is open. I knock on the sheet-metal next to it, thinking dimly that people don’t usually knock. Except maybe the cops, on their weekly round.
No answer. Through the open door we catch glimpses of domesticated carnage. An overturned lounge, belching wire springs and foam.
A woman comes at length.
‘G’day. Uh, is Aileen here?’
‘Nah, gone.’ She looks tired.
The town seems deserted. No-one is in charge. I want to do things properly. Get some written permission. But we are here, now, and Amy isn’t as concerned as I. She’s spent more time on communities than myself, and has other things on her mind.
A pack of dogs eyes us warily as we return to the Holden.
I feel self-conscious in the council car, with its ‘Shire of Halls Creek’ logo on the side, above pictures of spear-wielding tribesmen and the Bungle Bungles. We’ll be seen as representatives of the authorities. At least, for a while.
We see a pair of old ladies, sitting in the shade. I roll down the electric windows as one of the ladies shuffles over to Amy’s side. She’s wearing a bright, floral print dress. Her face seems to have aged in such a way that it’s set in a permanent, wrinkled smile. When she sees Amy’s face printed up in dots and fluorescent lines her body begins shaking with laughter. Amy tries explaining why we’re here. The lady doesn’t understand. She turns to her friend and says something in language. Her friend starts laughing, too.
‘We’ve come for the children,’ Amy says, slowly and deliberately.
I flinch at her choice of phrase. The old lady doesn’t catch a word of it, understanding only with her rolling laughter. She composes herself enough to point us to another house, but it’s empty. We take a seat on the wooden stands by the edge of the basketball court, unsure about what to do. We can’t see any kids. Only the Rottweiler paces about the playground.
Yesterday, at Yiyili community, the white kindergarten teacher warned us not to take photos. ‘Some of their parents are dead,’ she whispered to us. ‘That girl’s mother was murdered.’ She’d showed us through the kindergarten, lovingly showing us pictures of her students. Pointing out the ones with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. ‘The kids out here have problems with the flies,’ she said. ‘There’s a particular fly that shits in the corner of your eye, causing it to blow up the size of a tennis ball.’
She took us to the Yiyili Arts Centre. You can see where government money is spent at these communities. It isn’t scattered, like notes fluttering to earth, but dropped, like a bag of coins. Bang – a brand-new Arts Centre dropped amidst the rubble. The kindy teacher had just led a tour group through the air-conditioned gallery. I’m guessing she didn’t show them the rest.
But these are just thoughts, my own naïve thoughts, I think as I watch the Rottweiler nuzzle the garbage in search of food. Thinking about What Needs To Be Done out here is a maze of mirrors. You can get lost in there. And, in your efforts to get out, you end up breaking things.
‘C’mon,’ Amy says. ‘I see some kids!’
I stub out my cigarette in an empty tuna tin, and grab the supplies from the car. Amy walks in joyous bounds. I follow. It’s her mission. She came up with the idea and arranged a car through the council; I said I’d help her. Before we started, I was prone to thinking that kids are like a pair of boots – with the good ones you don’t notice they’re there. But Amy has an affinity with children. An ex-boyfriend dumped her in Canada, years ago, and she’d limped into Vancouver. Broke, and alone. She’d checked into a dive hotel with crims and junkies. She’d worked as a clown busker, face-painting and making balloon animals for the kids. Earning just enough to pay her board and buy food for the day. Now, she’s teaching the Halls Creek kindergarten class, and she’s volunteered her school holidays to clown about at some nearby communities.
Two American backpackers had asked Amy what our ‘message’ is. When she’d told me this I’d been as stumped as she was.
‘Struth. Our message? They must think we’re members of some psilocybin-fuelled Christian cult…. Our message? Do we have one? I like to think that balloons speak for themselves.’
Our mission is in the name of no God. Unless there’s a God of fun and foolishness, and for this God I know no name. Perhaps He’s too busy giggling to write down any scriptures.
What if Captain Cook had arrived bearing balloons and face-paints?
‘Hello!’ Amy says with music in her voice. The four kids halt their amble up a dirt street between jumbled houses, and regard her with amused curiosity. ‘Do you mob want your faces painted?’ I begin blowing up balloons and handing them out, demonstrating that it’s fun to paint on them, and putting stickers on their foreheads and outstretched hands.
Their laughter brings other kids, running from nowhere to join the excitement. Their bare feet puff up clouds of red dust. Parents poke their heads out of houses. We’re making a scene again.
‘Do you like Spiderman?’ Amy asks a boy in a West Coast singlet.
‘Nah Miss, I wannabe Venom, Miss. Makemeda Venom…please.’
‘Venom?’
‘I’ll field this one,’ I say. ‘Venom looks like a black version of Spiderman.’ The kid isn’t making a cultural statement, Venom is just the Boss. He was my favourite, too.
More kids join us. Older kids. Sullen teenagers. There’s too many young ‘uns for Amy to paint them all, so a pair of the teenagers start painting their brothers and sisters.
I see a mother smiling at us from beneath a tree, as she breast-feeds her infant. A boy envelops Amy in a hug and says ‘Spiderman! Spiderman!’ She’s halfway through painting a girl with glitter and says she’ll paint him next. The boy hurtles away, crashing into a house, and returns wearing his Spiderman pants.
This is the last community we’ll visit on this trip, so I hand out the rest of the balloons, paints, and stickers. We don’t mind if the kids squeeze out the paint and smear it all over themselves, through squeals of laughter. We don’t have to tell them off. A boy grabs a red balloon from me, meant for a toddler next to him. ‘That one was for him, mate, but here, I’ll get you another one.’ He hands the red balloon to the toddler, who runs off waving it about above his head.
‘Do you catch Barramundi in the Fitzroy River this time of year?’ I ask the boy.
He looks at me as I’m simple-minded. ‘Nah,’ he says, shocked he’d have to explain this to a full-grown man. ‘Later on whenda water is warmer. Big Barra inda Wet,’ he says.
I’m distracted by the sudden fury of dogs barking. I hear yelps of agony. A Staffie emerges from the dusty brawl, running towards us as the pack abandons its pursuit. The Staffie plops down by us, panting. A jewelled string of drool slips from her mouth. She’s been bitten. Pearls of blood drip into the sand, made bright by the sun. No-one else seems to notice. She licks at the open wound, and the bleeding stops.
The heat is dizzying as I crouch in the dust. My head swims on this land.
A girl is saying ‘Happy Good Clown! Happy Good Clown!’ I realize she’s talking about Amy. Amy, with a serene smile on her lips. ‘Happy Good Clown! Miss! Is he your husband?’ Amy laughs. I know what she’s thinking. Recently another young girl asked the same question, and Amy had replied, ‘No, he’s my boyfriend.’ ‘Oh…,’ said the young girl. ‘So where your husband?’
I’d told this anecdote to an old Jaru bloke, I’ll call him Mr. Barramundi. He was a patient in the hospital, where I work as the Cook. Mr. Barramundi had grinned at the tale, and said, ‘it’s what’s in your heart, mate, not what’s onna bitta paper.’ I’d thought about that one, as I cooked the evening feed. I didn’t realize I was cooking Mr. Barramundi’s last meal. When I returned in the morning he was gone, and the bed was made up. ‘It’s what’s in your heart,’ he said, ‘not what’s onna bitta paper.’
As we wave goodbye to Bayulu a boy shouts to me, ‘hey boss! Boss! She your wife?’ I look back so a sea of Spidermen and glittering Princesses.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘She’s my wife.’
They giggle and titter and run off home, satisfied.
Silent we leave, as silent we came in. I place my hand on Amy’s knee. Like all clowns, she’s crying a little on the inside. Bayulu, that sounds like ‘bay-loo,’ and a hundred tales that we may never hear – drowned for a moment in the song of laughter, and enveloped on all sides by the many shades of foolishness.
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