Riding the Black Cockatoo Read online

  Fiona’s husband, Danny, was working through a set of vigorous exercises and stretches on the floor. I sat on the couch with Bianca beside me and tried to look relaxed. Danny jumped up and shook my hand – hard! – before launching himself into another set of stretches. This man was well put together, and as his muscles rippled the word ‘warrior’ flashed through my head. I asked Danny whether he boxed, tilting my head towards a picture of Anthony Mundine on the wall. He shook his head and explained that he’d just set up a personal training business. ‘It’s gunna be a growth industry, you just wait and see; got a few steady clients already.’

  Fiona’s younger daughter Ebony, who had been holding back, was unable to contain herself any longer. She leapt in front of Bianca with her hands out. ‘Let’s play !’ Bianca flew off the couch and the two skipped down the hallway to Ebony’s room.

  ‘Tell me your story again,’ Fiona asked. ‘Danny !’ she gently remonstrated as her husband began another impressive set of contortions.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ she smiled. I could tell by the way she looked at her husband that she was crazy about him. He shot her a cheeky grin back.

  I told the story again, in more detail than I’d told her over the phone. Every now and then she winced in pain or shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I just find this so hard to comprehend – I mean, why?’ She turned to Danny. ‘Can you imagine having a whitefella’s skull on our mantelpiece?’

  Danny was glistening with a light coat of sweat, the veins in his arms bulged and I was expecting at any moment to be thrown out the door for upsetting his wife. When I got to the end of the story – to the bit about the cockatoo – Danny took down the headdress, gently stroking and straightening the feathers as Fiona explained the importance of birds.

  ‘They’re our messengers. Just the other day one landed on my windowsill and straight away I knew an auntie was sick. I rang her up and sure enough she had a really bad stomach bug.’

  ‘This is beeswax,’ Danny explained, pointing to the black, resin-like lump that held the feathers in place. ‘It’s strong stuff, but this headdress has been travelling to lots of dances, so it’s getting a bit knocked around.’

  He placed the headdress in my lap.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of it,’ I promised.

  Danny pointed to one of the feathers. ‘This one’s broken, I’ve just put some Blu-Tack behind it to keep it straight.’

  Giggles and laughter wafted up the hallway from Ebony’s room and washed over us. I felt much more at ease, with the laughter, with the headdress in my lap.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ I asked Fiona.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  ‘Well, this, this thing that’s happening, this power. It feels as though Mary’s being carried home on a wave that just keeps building. I feel as though I’m hanging on moment by moment.’

  ‘That’s the way life is supposed to be,’ said Fiona. ‘It’s normal for us, the land is telling us things all the time.’

  And then she said something that I will carry with me forever. ‘You’re just a whitefella who’s learnt to listen, that’s all.’

  Ebony and Bianca came bounding into the lounge room.

  ‘Look, Dad, look what Ebony gave me!’ Bianca held up her wrist. Around it was wrapped a homemade bracelet with Ebony’s name spelt out in beads.

  Fiona smiled. ‘Trading gifts already!’

  If not for the difference in colour, our two girls could have been twins; their hair was the same length and they even wore similar flowing dresses.

  ‘Bianca is an Italian name,’ I said, ‘it means white. Ebony and Bianca, black and white.’ There were smiles all around, until I put my foot in it. I must have gotten carried away by all the lovin’ in the room.

  ‘Ebony’s a special name in our house, we have a big, fat black chook called Ebony.’

  Suddenly all that lovin’ froze.

  Fiona wasn’t sure what to say. ‘You have a black chicken called Ebony?’

  ‘She’s more like one of the family,’ I said meekly.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ beamed Bianca.

  Fiona shook her head and laughed.

  As if on cue, we all rose and headed for the door. I placed the headdress gently into the back seat and said goodbye, promising to return the feathers in a weeks time.

  Just before bedtime the phone rang. It was Bob Weatherall, the repatriation expert who had been away fishing. He had a voice as smooth and as deep as the river bend I imagined he’d been camping at; and when he laughed, it was with the lightness of a songbird. He’d received my message and had also heard about the handover on the grapevine. Bob explained that he was getting things organised and suggested we touch base again the next day. He was completely calm and relaxed, the way you’d expect someone to sound after spending two weeks fishing in country that they loved. He told me that he and his mate had snuck into a good fishing spot on a neighbouring clan’s land without asking for permission.

  ‘There we were, lines in the water, out in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly this old fella comes out from the reeds waggin’ his finger at us like we were two naughty boys. I said, “You got us, Uncle, you got us!’’ He laughed with that sing-songy hee-hee laugh of his. It was a laugh that told me Mary was in safe hands.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  { 10 OCTOBER 2005 }

  I rode to the suburban campus of the University early in the morning, the gravel crackling beneath my tyres as I followed a bush track that ran through a reserve. I looked for black cockatoos, but instead had to contend with a squealing, wheeling rainbow of nectar-drunk lorikeets. One defecated in mid-flight, its quicksilver poop catching the morning sun.

  My first lecture of the day wasn’t due to start for an hour, so I headed for Craig’s office at the Oodgeroo Unit. Craig was sitting rigidly at attention with the phone pressed to his ear. He waved me in, motioned to a chair and mouthed the word ‘Victor’. I could hear the raised voice of Craig’s boss barking a continual stream of instructions down the line.

  ‘He just came in two seconds ago.’ Craig passed me the handset and slumped back; his office chair reclined with a groan.

  Victor’s voice seemed to have lowered a notch or two when he spoke to me, but not much; he explained that he was quite stressed from the Mornington Island business and that the timing of the handover couldn’t be worse for the unit, though he understood that the reburial couldn’t be postponed.

  ‘Everything has to be done correctly, a whitefella can’t just invite Wamba Wamba fellas up here to perform a ceremony in Turrbal Country, otherwise it’s just terra bloody nullius all over again.’

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me, what’s terrible country?’ I asked.

  ‘Turrbal! Turrbal country; Brisbane; where you’re sitting right now.’ He let go a frustrated sigh. ‘Look, we’ll make sure the old fella gets sent home properly, but if it’s not done correctly there’ll be a lot of elders lining up to kick my arse and this unit cannot afford to have its arse kicked.’

  I handed the phone back to Craig and heard Victor’s voice go back up to its previous levels. Craig simply said, ‘Yes, yes, I understand, yes, don’t worry, got it, yes.’

  My post-ride afterglow was a rapidly fading memory.

  Craig put down the smoking handset, collapsed back into his reclining office chair and exhaled.

  ‘Sorry,’ I offered pathetically.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You’ve done the right thing. It gets a bit complicated around Brisbane, we don’t just have to get permission from the Turrbal clan, we have to inform the Jugera group as well.’

  Craig explained that the Turrbal clan was virtually wiped out when Brisbane was settled, which opened the door for other groups, mainly the Jugera, to claim the Brisbane area as their ancestral homeland.

  ‘These things can get a bit political; plenty of our own people are just waiting to jump on us if they think we’re stepping o
ut of line.’

  I’d once read that Aboriginal tribes required permission to travel across the country of others, but I’d never considered that these same laws and territorial protocols might still be in place today.

  ‘When one clan carries out business, any business, in another clan’s country, there has to be discussion, consultation, permission,’ Craig explained, ‘especially with Sorry Business. That’s the most serious business of all.’

  { 11 OCTOBER 2005 }

  Next morning I visited the main office of the Oodgeroo Unit, at the University's inner-city campus. This was the unit’s headquarters, four times as big as the suburban campus’s office I had visited the day before. I had scurried past its glass doors and courtyard many times, but this was my first ever visit inside. At the front desk, a pretty young woman called Katie looked up from her work and smiled.

  ‘Hi, my name’s John, I’m involved in tomorrow’s handover ceremony.’

  Katie’s eyes widened. ‘We were only told this morning, can you believe this family actually kept a skull in their lounge room.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’ I felt totally naked. ‘That was my family, I’m the fella handing it back.’

  Katie looked at me – into me – but there was no judgement or negativity in her eyes.

  ‘Your family is doing the right thing, but I tell you, everyone here’s in a flap with Victor away and all these people coming tomorrow. It’s the first time we’ve ever done anything like this.’

  Katie directed me outside to the courtyard where the acting manager was briefing the campus building managers and heads of security. Victor’s stand-in was a slight woman in her late fifties, but her voice packed the punch of a school headmistress and the men she briefed listened attentively. I moved to the side of the courtyard, sat under the shade of a tree and listened in. What an ants’ nest I’d stirred up! The air-conditioning plant for the entire block needed to be shut down because the intake ducts were near where the smoking ceremony was to take place. The fire and safety wardens of all the surrounding blocks were to be informed to prevent any panic once the smoke started billowing. Extra security staff had to be posted at strategic points to keep curious onlookers at bay, and the Indigenous members of the security department needed to be informed about the Sorry Business so that they could choose either to become involved, or to avoid the area altogether. Concrete table and chair settings had to be moved from the courtyard by a heavy lifting vehicle, and replaced with rows of single plastic chairs. The list went on and on. The manager hadn’t noticed me, so I slunk away, embarrassed, overwhelmed. It was a ten-minute walk to where my car was parked; halfway there I stopped, took a few deep breaths, and headed back to face the music.

  The Oodgeroo Unit courtyard was now empty of officials; two staff on tea break puffed cigarettes. As I walked past I caught a fragment of their quiet conversation that I’m sure included the word ‘skull’.

  ‘Oh there you are,’ said Katie as I re-entered the office. ‘We were wondering where you’d got to.’

  She led me into the acting manager’s office where I was greeted with a generous smile. I began to apologise for all the disruption I’d caused, but the acting manager waved my words away. She was more concerned with how I was coping! She handed me a running sheet for the next day’s ceremony and asked me to check with the Wamba Wamba people that everything was in accordance with their wishes. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing,’ she smiled, ‘it’s going to be a beautiful handover.’

  I spent the rest of the day at home working the phone – I’d never spent so much time on the phone as I had in these last two weeks! Emails bounced backwards and forwards. Gary gave the running sheet the thumbs-up. The University media unit swung into action and together we worked up a press release which was then wired out to media outlets all around the country. Within minutes of the press release going out, the local ABC radio station had requested an interview at the station in the morning with Bob, Gary and me.

  That evening I called Bob to let him know about the interview. He was happy to have an opportunity to speak about repatriation. ‘We have to use these opportunities to educate the people, it’s all part of the healing.’

  I offered to pick Bob up early in the morning, for it made sense to go to the radio station together; we’d meet Gary and the songman for the interview and then all head off for the ceremony.

  ‘If the songman’s with Gary, will you have enough room for everybody?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I answered, ‘I’ll just put the remains in the boot.’

  ‘You’ll what?’ Bob’s words came out in one even sound, like a samurai sword being slowly drawn from its scabbard.

  I suddenly realised that by everybody Bob was also referring to Mary.

  ‘Uh, oh, ahhh . . .’ I’d put my foot in it again. ‘Sorry, Bob, I wasn’t thinking, yes, there’ll be room for us all up front.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ he said, the warmth ebbing back into his voice. ‘See you at 7.30.’

  Mary lay in my studio under the house. Since bringing him home, I’d kept him in a hard black Pelican case – the kind photographers use – with the cockatoo feather headdress sitting on top like a sentinel. With careful hands I put the headdress to one side, took Mary out and wandered into the back yard. The moon was shining through the canopy of native trees I’d planted when we moved in ten years ago. It was very late and the neighbouring houses were all dark and still. I held Mary towards the moon and whispered, ‘This is it, Mary, your last night in Meanjin.’ (Meanjin is the traditional name for Brisbane.)

  We stood near my favourite tree, an eight-year-old lemon-scented myrtle. A breeze wafted up from the gully and through the tree, bathing us both in citrus perfume. I’d been wondering what to wrap Mary in for her journey home – bubble wrap seemed so twenty-first century. Now I knew. I took Mary back inside and returned to the tree; thick waves of citrus filled the night as I snapped and tore off armfuls of foliage. I made a bed of leaves and sprigs in the case and sat Mary upright with the headdress propped up behind him against the open lid – it looked as though he was wearing it. Then I placed the whole arrangement near the window; I’m not exactly sure why, I didn’t think, I just acted naturally, like a child. I switched off the lights, and then, just before leaving the room, turned to look back at my old friend. Moonlight spilled through the window and draped its lacy veil across Mary and the headdress.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  { 12 OCTOBER 2005 }

  Just after sun-up, the songman phoned. It was Jason, the young man I’d spoken to when I’d first made contact with Mary’s people; he had arrived – without Gary! There had been another death in the clan and Gary was obliged to stay behind in Melbourne to take care of the arrangements. It seemed that every second time I spoke with an Aboriginal person, someone close to them had died.

  ‘Another one!’ I spat the words out. It makes me cringe now to admit it, but I felt very put out; I might as well have said, ‘Can’t you people stop dying, we’re trying to organise a repatriation here!’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve had a bad run lately; we’ve lost four in the last few weeks.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to sound sympathetic, and I was, but the news of Gary’s non-arrival had knocked the wind out of me.

  ‘Listen, John, I can hear you’re disappointed, but we’re going to do this, and it’s going be fine, okay.’

  The confidence in Jason’s voice reassured me. He was right; Mary was still going home and that’s all that mattered. We agreed to meet at the ABC Radio studios at 9 a.m.

  ‘Why is Daddy staring so hard at nothing?’ Bianca asked.

  ‘Don’t forget to chew,’ said Stella as I gulped down the bacon-and-egg breakfast she’d prepared. ‘You won’t be of use to anyone if you choke.’

  It was true, my mind was far away and I was forking food into my maw as if I was shovelling coal into a furnace. After breakfast I spent a few minutes touching up a short speech that I’d be
en wrestling with; somehow the short speech had ballooned into six pages. There was a long list of people to thank and acknowledge, but more importantly, how could I possibly explain the bizarre relationship between my family and a long-deceased Wamba Wamba man? The more I wrote the more knotted up I became, until I realised that what I was really doing was trying to justify a wrongdoing. With a heavy black marker I crossed out line upon line, until only a third of the speech remained. I folded the pages and put them in my pocket. I’d have another look at it later, now it was time to pack Mary.

  I opened the studio door, and the scent of lemon myrtle greeted me – the room, the case, everything smelt clean, renewed. I laid Mary on his side and packed the leaves around him tightly; he looked majestic wrapped in his green going-away finery. I tried to say something poignant but realised that the night before had been our proper farewell – the moon, the dancing trees, the silence had said it all. The case catches closed with a final farewell snap. The fragrance lingered on my fingers; I put them to my nose and inhaled deeply, feeling myself relax a little. I followed my feet out into the yard and tore some larger branches from the lemon myrtle. My feet then took me to the garage where our little blue Mazda hatchback sat. I brushed the branches through the car’s interior, purifying it, and then arranged them neatly along the back parcel shelf, pushing the sprigs flat so I’d be able to see out the rear window. Gathering up the loose leaves, I tore them into smaller pieces and jammed the native potpourri into the ashtray; I hoped Bob and Jason weren’t smokers – if they were we’d be having our own little ceremonial fire in the Mazda! I had no idea what I was doing, I was letting instinct lead me. When I’d finished, the car reminded me of a funeral boat, the sort that took fallen Nordic warriors across the misty waters to Valhalla.