Blog 5: Creative – That Deadman Dance

Author’s Note: Being of African and European descent, I understand how tricky the fusion of cultures can become. I everyday feel blessed that I had parents who came from different parts of the world. I’m glad to know how the dichotomy of humanity can be the most complex and confounding experience for one person.

Reading ‘That Deadman Dance’, a moment in the book that struck me was when Bobby’s niece and nephew visited. I wondered at their personal experience as biracial individuals in colonialist Australia.

I was brought back to the memory of meeting my paternal grandfather in Ghana for the first time when I was very little; there was such wisdom, joy and melancholy within him all at once. He appreciated that I wanted to learn about the reality of my people.

This piece is a culmination of the feelings I experienced listening to my grandfather’s spirit in the mythological stories I remember from Ghana. It is an imagining of Bobby’s relatives’ interactions with the Noongar and the English, envisioning how dispossession is perceived by an individual forged of both the coloniser and the indigenous.

“6 years I’ve been in the desert
and every night, I dream of the sea
they say, ‘home is where you find it.’
will this place ever satisfy me?
for I come from the saltwater people
we’ve always lived by the sea
now I’m out here west of Alice Springs
with a wife and a family”

Neil Murry ‘My Island Home’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZEodxUx2ME

Jak Tar & Binyan’s children visit their Uncle Bobby

A lonely man on the shoreline, he sits with the fire and the sea.

The townsfolk say, “Oh, Old Bobby Wabalanginy, yes, he’ll be speaking his stories.”

The townsfolk say, “You’ll find him singing to the wind and the whales.”

The townsfolk say, “That mad, ol’ blackfella who won’t shut his gob.”

My brother and I wave to Uncle Bobby from the oldest path in this place: the town to the sea.

He waves back. White teeth glisten against flesh stained with ochre and a frizzy, grey-stroked mane roaring in the wind. Uncle Bobby beckons us toward the pulsating glow of his campfire.

I run to him barefoot and my brother scoffs at the sand in his shoes.

Uncle Bobby engulfs us both with weak arms and strong embrace, murmuring Noongar words of welcome into the shells of our ears. As if we are the very shells on this beach, he talks to the saltwater inside ourselves–inside our veins.

Our Papa says, “You and your brother and your mother, you don’t bleed blood. You bleed the ocean and rivers, it’s part of you.”

This Mabarn man smells of the Holy Trinity: the sea and the land and the man.

Ushered around Uncle Bobby’s campfire, he builds it up hot for us and hums in baritone brooding. My brother mutters about the stench of smoke soaking into his new coat and I close my eyes with the ash colouring my cheeks like a strange rouge.

My brother looks to the town longingly. A girl of flaxen curls and cerulean eyes passes us, holding a parasol to the sun, and the woman beside her looks to Bobby with an inquisitive gaze.

“Governor’s wife,” he says in a faraway voice.

“His daughter, too?” My brother asks.

I turn to Uncle Bobby – his large, black eyes alight in the flames. “Tell me about the whales, Uncle Bobby,” I say with delicate distraction on my smile and he knows I mean to take him from thoughts of the past. He knows I ask him to tell me about the past before the past…a time before time. 

Though my brother’s eyes follow the governor’s wife and daughter, Uncle Bobby looks to the ocean and so do I. We watch the waves catch on the sunset, the shadow of spirits leap from crest to crest.

“I see them, Uncle Bobby,” I say and pretend I do not notice the tears fall into the old man’s fire. “I see them.”