THE KIMBERLEY
Indigenous history is deeply interwoven into the Kimberley region in Australia’s far north-west. One man is determined to preserve its ancient names, stories and spirit.
Indigenous history is interwoven into the Kimberley region in Australia’s far north- west. One man is determined to preserve its ancient names and stories.
It’s the calm before the storm – the intense heat that builds up before the beginning of the wet season. We’re about two hours north of the Indigenous community of Yiyili, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The vehicles we’re travelling in are feeling the heat too, with their radiators bubbling and their fanbelts screaming. And according to comedian, musician and documentary director, Mark Bin Bakar, my face has turned the colour of a red salty plum.
But senior Lunga Kitja and Gooniyandi man Matt Pagey Dawson is determined to show us his country – the waterholes, gorges, birth trees, sand soaks, caves and dry river beds lined with wulladi (white gums) of the Mueller Ranges, part of Louisa Downs – an Indigenous- owned cattle station around 100km west of Halls Creek.
I’m with a documentary team led by Bin Bakar, who is Dawson’s great-nephew. They’re shooting his latest film, Nomad in the Saddle, which follows Munjarri (Dawson’s Aboriginal name) to his remote country to document its ancient place names and stories, and the songlines that connect them.
Bin Bakar first met Dawson at a funeral he attended here around 10 years ago with his mother Phyllis – a member of the Stolen Generations.
Dawson was seven years old when his sister’s three-year- old daughter, Phyllis, disappeared from their community after she was sent to
Derby Native Hospital for health care. A doctor removed her to a Catholic orphanage in Broome rather than send her back to her mother, whom she only met once again in later life.
Bin Baker made a documentary about his mother, Phyllis – Peeping Thru the Louvres – in 1999. It showed Dawson taking Phyllis ( his niece) on an emotional journey back to the paperbark or birth tree (known as Moordaringhi) on the island in Margaret River where she was born.
Now it’s Dawson’s turn to tell his story, and in the process capture the information from “ngadaardi – long time” – before he is gone. While in indigenous culture its usually taboo to name somebody after they die, Dawson says he wants to be remembered. “Call out my name, don’t forget me,” he says.
I ask Dawson what year he was born and he shakes his head – he’s never known for sure. However, it is believed that he was born around 1936 on Margaret River station, then owned by the infamous Lord Vestey.
Dawson’s father was a renowned stockman on Vestey’s station – and from young adolescence Dawson was trained by his dad and his older brother, Monroe, to be a stockman, master cattleman and horse handler. Although he never learned to read or write, his memory and senses are phenomenal. He rattles off the names of all the stations where he’s worked, both in the East Kimberley and over the border in the Northern Territory.
Despite many clashes between pastoralists and Indigenous people, by the late 19th century most of the Kimberley was covered in leases that were worked by Indigenous ringers.
The explorers and new owners of this country soon gave English names to rivers, creeks and gorges – but that didn’t mean the local knowledge was lost. Their nomadic life in the saddle allowed Dawson and his people to camp and connect to the country, and make sure all of the places, names and stories were protected.
“You have to sing out … the spirits will look after you and guide you then.” MATT PAGEY DAWSON
“I bring blackfella names into the gudia [whitefella] name,” he says of the aim of the doco. “Why gudia names should be bigger and better? Why should it be wiped off? Blackfella name is important. Every blackfella right around Australia need to do it.”
The first night out here, we drive in convoy under a pitch-black sky lit by a rising full moon. We meet up with young stockmen – many of whom are Dawson’s family – travelling back to camp after a long day of tiring work. The next morning at Number Seven
stockyard, Jilgarrda, Dawson surveys the “cheeky bulls” mustered by the stockmen and outlines the routine he once led – getting up at dawn (he still rises each day at around four), then knocking off for dinner bang on 12.
Bad memories as well as good flood back, and he recounts tales of massacres, as well as whitefellas fighting each other over women.
Despite their years of work, when equal wages were introduced in the late 1960s, most Indigenous people were turned off the stations. Dawson and his brothers were highly valued by the management at Margaret River station, however, and were kept on.
Out of a leather briefcase Dawson produces fading photos of Monroe; another brother, Wallaby; and others at the Halls Creek Rodeo in the 1970s, where they won prizes for cutting and horsemanship. As he puts it: “I might be a bit wobbly on my feet, you see me walking like this,” he displays his crooked legs and bent knees. “But in the saddle I’m a different man.”
“I’m a horsebreaker, I can teach a horse, I can do the head stockman job, I can do fencing,” he says. “I can make my horse work just like a fourwheel-drive motorcar.” But he doesn’t like the new ways, where helicopters have replaced horses for mustering. “That fellow flying the helicopter is risking his life. They need to get back to horsepower,” he states.
In the 1980s, Indigenous people across the Kimberley started buying up stations – including Louisa Downs – which were often abandoned by their white owners. And in 1981, Yiyili was established on land excised from the pastoral lease. Later Dawson formed his own community, Pullout Spring, a few kilometres away. Now he’s one of the main claimants on the Lunga Kitja native title claim, one of the last to be determined in the Kimberley. “When we got our own community, we’re independent then,” he explains.
Dawson regularly has to travel 420km to Derby for his wife Flora’s medical treatment. Because of this, it’s been a while since he’s been out in the country, and he discovers that big wet seasons and flooding have changed the landscape enormously. He leads us to Gurramoo, a deep green rock hole and significant site. We clamber over rocks to look down over the edge, and a freshwater crocodile is spotted in the water below. Dawson instructs us each to find a rock, wipe it under our armpits so our body odour is on it and throw it in. This way we’re introducing ourselves to the spirit of the rock hole and letting it know we’re here on this land with good intentions. “You have to sing out, ‘I’m coming. I know you fellows bin looking out for me.’ These spirits will look after you and guide you then,” Dawson states.
Out next to a bore on Margaret River station, he explains that “all the old people knew all the short cuts” – the camping spots and where to find bush food. He points to trees where they used to collect “coolamons full of minjarra [bush plums]”.
Eventually we head back to Pullout Spring. There, the bus for the Yiyili Independent School is doing the rounds. The kids – many of them Dawson’s great-grandchildren – learn Gooniyandi, but Dawson also wants to preserve the Kitja language. And, according to Bin Bakar, “this is why this doco is so important”.
In the evening, the storm hits. Lightning scrapes across the sky and horizontal rain splashes the house’s verandah, where Dawson sits ‘singing’ the rain: “Come on rain, come on rain.”
“Taam yurriyangem,” Dawson says. “This means this is our country for all Lunga Kitja people, everybody.”
• Nomad in the Saddle will air on NITV in 2019.