Inspiration: Week Four readings and lectures established the development of the early Australian identity. Throughout, I noted a connection between Tom Roberts’ ‘Golden Fleece’ and Mary Gilmore’s ‘Australia’, linking the Australian identity to Greek Mythos.

‘The Ilweme’s Wife’ sort of manifested from my prior understanding of Greek mythos, some readings from the Pen Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (just as some extended reading) and the readings and artworks from Week 4. I felt I couldn’t creatively relate to the writings of Lawson or Patterson, so I chose a different perspective. I don’t have any Indigenous Australian or First Fleet heritage, so this isn’t technically ‘my’ story or the story of my ancestors, but I know I can relate to an appreciation of nature and earth because of my West African roots.  

I found myself oddly inspired by Gilmore’s mentioning of Hades and found myself envisioning the God of Death as an outback shearer–hard yakka and rough manners–presiding over his land with dominance and vulgarity, attaining the ‘Golden Fleece’ of Australia: the hero’s loot of mother earth (natural resources and land to cultivate).

But whose land was he was really rearing? According to the myth, Hades had stolen Persephone–the Greek personification of nature and earth–and I felt I could not ‘Australianise’ Persephone’s connection to earth without translating it through the eyes of a captured Arrernte (Arunta) woman from Central Australia, a slave bound interminably to the stockman, stolen from her mother and longing for the connection to country and culture.

The title itself is a nod to Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife”, a story of the hardships in the outback. ‘Ilweme’ means “dead” in the Arrernte language. Therefore, we are reading a story of The Dead’s Wife.

Acknowledgment of Country and Culture {for use of Arrernte language}: I acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians whose ancestral land, traditions and language I am implementing throughout my fictional work. I acknowledge the deep feelings of attachment and relationship of Aboriginal peoples to country. I also pay my respects to the cultural and linguistic authority of the Aboriginal peoples of Central Australia who are reading this work.

“Mark where, fallen, the tribes move in the shadow:
Dark are the silent places were Arunta walks
Dark as the dim valleys of Hades, where stalk,
grey-shaped, the heroes and the gods of the Greeks.
These were the young, for even then Arunta was old.”

Wilde, W.H. “Australian Dictionary of Biography.” Biography – Dame Mary Jean Gilmore – Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gilmore-dame-mary-jean-6391.

The Ilweme’s Wife

“Water,” you bellow, and I scramble to the kitchen to fetch a pitcher.

You emerge from the shed covered in red dust, angry sweat and white wisps of the animals. Snatching the jug from my grasp, you keep me from escaping with a rough grip on my hip.

You want me to watch you swallow the water, so I turn my eyes to the sun.

Those indigo eyes of a dingo–this hungry akngwelye artnwere. My gaze can only touch the white fibres in your facial hair. When you seek me at nightfall–as Eros visits Psyche in the silent, swallowing dark–you tell me those embers of white in your urrperle beard are the closest thing I shall ever taste to snow. If only you knew it was I who begged my mother to sketch into kwatye akantyere the first snowflakes of Kosciuszko.

If you are the king of the ilweme, your domain is indeed vast, but this country is not your kingdom–no more yours than it is mine, you foolish outback idol. This is not your province – this land I touch and love and mourn. This country you say you’ve claimed is my atyemeye, and I feel her wails encase me as the kwatye pere splits across the plane.

If the land is my atyemeye, then you are the god who has taken me from her. Still, I stand upon the cradle of her yenpe and hear her voice beckoning, ‘Daughter, come home. Come home.’

But her whispers are muffled by the calamity of the workmen on the cattle station.

And every night you call me with the light of the Southern Cross on your pale Olympian flesh, yet you do not realise it is the starlight of all amiwarre that has defied your rule. You capture me and the name clenched between your teeth is…Persephone. You do not see that I am older than that name–older than the life of the flower child stolen by the death god.

I hold memories older than even your immemorial name.

The pantheon of gods in the shed resumes their plunder of the animals. You’re an ocker and an oaf, yet your commands are obeyed among the bleats of both shearers and sheep. Always in pursuit of that perfect cut of sheep’s coat–a shearer ever seeking the Golden Fleece.

I return to my chores and listen as werneme calls, ‘come home, daughter. Come home.’

“Akarelheme,” I say, though I think you know I have forgotten what this means.

~ fin ~

Arrernte Vocabulary:

“Arrernte Vocab.” Memrise, https://www.memrise.com/course/173460/arrernte-vocab/.

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.”