treasure chests in the minds of these people. A sea people such as themselves come from so far away to be lost, would forever have all seas in their sights. That was their story.
The young people of the Pricklebush who could see distance, said his hands, hard-skinned, scarred and ready, were exactly the same as those men whose skilled hands customarily dragged nets and hooked lines for a job. It was easily assumed on the high-water mark that the man who later became known as Elias Smith, had come from some distant, mysterious place on the globe, where mourning people wearing dark woollen clothes prayed to weathered statues of the Maria de la Mer, or Maria Candida, Senora de la Spain or Madonna, Blessed Virgin, or Saint Nicholi – many, many countless rosaries for the children of Oceanides lost at sea.
You could tell this man might be equated with the Dreamtime world because when his memory was stolen, the mighty ancestral body of black clouds and gale-force winds had spun away, over and done with, in a matter of a flash. The old people said they knew the time this had happened to Elias Smith because they had been awake all night watching the sea, and seen the whole catastrophe of clouds, waves and wind rolling away, off in another direction. Elias was left floating face down in the watery jaws of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and as luck would have it, he grabbed a polystyrene fruit box with a bit of fruit still left inside to eat. He floated away on the currents heading our way.
The old people who refused to go down and join the watch because white people were there, said no one should go about making a major spectacle out of watching a wretched man walking out of the sea, even if he had walked through twenty-five kilometres of tidal flats full at high tide with the shallow mud waters at the height of the Wet season. Rightly! But that was town . Uptown kettle pot was different, Pricklebush whinged, wanting to go too.
While the Pricklebush stayed home, the Uptown people swooped in for the arrival of the stranger like it was something to rejoice about. Call it a phobia about not allowing legends to die. Call it flights of fancy that had driven every man, woman and child down onto the high-tide mark to wait patiently, ankle-deep in the mud, totally abandoning all of their daily jobs and duties, just to relive a familiar old story about their origins. Afar, at the same time, up along the foreshore, way back up the beach away from the town where the old people watched what the white people were doing, the Aboriginal people of Westside Pricklebush started to stir too.
Having heard the commotion, the elders climbed out of their damp bedding on the ground where they had slept through the cyclone, to go see where the noise was coming from. Someone’s excited today , they agreed, while settling down again in the long grass to watch. They always watched the goings-on of Uptown with restrained interest, and shortly afterwards, began their memory revisions. This was a daily task, a memory tribunal, undertaken with relish by the old people for everyone’s matter of concern – talking oral history about the sequestrators who owned Uptown. Every now and again, they would cast scathing glances up the road in the direction of the town. But on this day, the ancient owl-face woman, staring up the beach with the others in her company, and who knows what she saw with her eyesight, on behalf of all her people proclaimed sarcastically in a loud disgusted voice, ‘Ha! Ha! Look at us. We are the old people, and we knows you not even know where you ares from.’ The ‘we’ she was talking about, were her relations, the blackfella mob from Westside of town, belonging to Normal Phantom, the rightful traditional owner.
The Eastside camp was old Joseph Midnight’s mob exiled from Westside because they wanted to say that nobody else but they were the real traditional landowners where Desperance had been built. That idea originated from Old Cyclone
The young people of the Pricklebush who could see distance, said his hands, hard-skinned, scarred and ready, were exactly the same as those men whose skilled hands customarily dragged nets and hooked lines for a job. It was easily assumed on the high-water mark that the man who later became known as Elias Smith, had come from some distant, mysterious place on the globe, where mourning people wearing dark woollen clothes prayed to weathered statues of the Maria de la Mer, or Maria Candida, Senora de la Spain or Madonna, Blessed Virgin, or Saint Nicholi – many, many countless rosaries for the children of Oceanides lost at sea.
You could tell this man might be equated with the Dreamtime world because when his memory was stolen, the mighty ancestral body of black clouds and gale-force winds had spun away, over and done with, in a matter of a flash. The old people said they knew the time this had happened to Elias Smith because they had been awake all night watching the sea, and seen the whole catastrophe of clouds, waves and wind rolling away, off in another direction. Elias was left floating face down in the watery jaws of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and as luck would have it, he grabbed a polystyrene fruit box with a bit of fruit still left inside to eat. He floated away on the currents heading our way.
The old people who refused to go down and join the watch because white people were there, said no one should go about making a major spectacle out of watching a wretched man walking out of the sea, even if he had walked through twenty-five kilometres of tidal flats full at high tide with the shallow mud waters at the height of the Wet season. Rightly! But that was town . Uptown kettle pot was different, Pricklebush whinged, wanting to go too.
While the Pricklebush stayed home, the Uptown people swooped in for the arrival of the stranger like it was something to rejoice about. Call it a phobia about not allowing legends to die. Call it flights of fancy that had driven every man, woman and child down onto the high-tide mark to wait patiently, ankle-deep in the mud, totally abandoning all of their daily jobs and duties, just to relive a familiar old story about their origins. Afar, at the same time, up along the foreshore, way back up the beach away from the town where the old people watched what the white people were doing, the Aboriginal people of Westside Pricklebush started to stir too.
Having heard the commotion, the elders climbed out of their damp bedding on the ground where they had slept through the cyclone, to go see where the noise was coming from. Someone’s excited today , they agreed, while settling down again in the long grass to watch. They always watched the goings-on of Uptown with restrained interest, and shortly afterwards, began their memory revisions. This was a daily task, a memory tribunal, undertaken with relish by the old people for everyone’s matter of concern – talking oral history about the sequestrators who owned Uptown. Every now and again, they would cast scathing glances up the road in the direction of the town. But on this day, the ancient owl-face woman, staring up the beach with the others in her company, and who knows what she saw with her eyesight, on behalf of all her people proclaimed sarcastically in a loud disgusted voice, ‘Ha! Ha! Look at us. We are the old people, and we knows you not even know where you ares from.’ The ‘we’ she was talking about, were her relations, the blackfella mob from Westside of town, belonging to Normal Phantom, the rightful traditional owner.
The Eastside camp was old Joseph Midnight’s mob exiled from Westside because they wanted to say that nobody else but they were the real traditional landowners where Desperance had been built. That idea originated from Old Cyclone
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