Read Online Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Victoria Finlay
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reinforced by stories of women being killed for looking at ceremonies. “It happened before white-fellas came,” she said. “But even now too,” she added pensively. “Maybe.”
Three days later my permit was turned down again: I realized I might not get my interviews. I had been circling carefully around both ochre and Arnhemland. I had talked to people who used it for hunting, and seen how it was still used for funerals. I had seen the colors that women use to imitate sacred patterns. But now it was time to meet some painters. “There’s a good mob down Barunga way: they do painting,” said a man I met at the Jabiru Social Club. So I called them. The Beswick and Barunga areas are in a protected area to the south-east of Kakadu. Could I come? How could I request a permit? I asked the arts coordinator, David Lane. “You’ve got a permit,” he said generously. “Come down when you like.” And yes, he confirmed, they did use natural ochres. “We’ll take you to find them if you want.”
I hired the only available four-wheel-drive in the area—a huge Nissan Patrol that made me feel I was Queen of the Road. When I arrived at Beswick, which was at the end of a red dust road so well made I felt a bit of a fraud in my grand car, I found a pleasant rural community of about five hundred people. There were picket fences and a well-tended playground and community center, with big houses set off the road and surrounded by grass and old mattresses. Beswick had been built in the 1940s when there was an emergency relocation of Aboriginal people from the coastal areas after the Japanese started bombing. Some had returned to Arnhemland but many had stayed, although some still dreamed of going home—and one of those dreamers was Tom Kelly.
Tom—a man in his sixties with a timeless etched face—was sitting on the porch of the main offices of Beswick. He had been a hand on a cattle station for many years but he had retired to Beswick to make and play didgeridoos—or “bamboos” as they call them in the creole that the people (who come from seven language groups) tend to use. “Tom’s one of the best,” David Lane told me. “He’s travelled the world with his didge.” Tom nodded matter-of-factly. “Been around,” he murmured. His group, the White Cockatoos, had been to many international music festivals, although now his dream was only to go back to live in Maningrida—the Arnhemland community where he was born—before his wife became too ill. Of all the places he had visited he’d liked America the best, especially meeting “them Indians,” who, he said, “also paint with ochre like us.”
He and David first showed me the didgeridoos. The stick-like instruments were covered in stories and pictures of lilies and file snakes and turtles in different ochre colors. One was decorated with a series of concentric red circles filled with white dashes, all on a black background. It represented water, Tom said, and the dashes were the effect of leaves falling on a waterhole. “It’s not country,” he said. “We don’t paint country on bamboos. Just pictures.”
He and two relatives—Abraham Kelly and Tango Lane Birrell— were to take me to find ochre from a nearby source called Jumped Up Creek, and suddenly my Nissan no longer seemed like an embarrassing overestimation of the terrain. Ten minutes out of town we turned off the main road onto what they said was a track, but I had my doubts. We churned up spiky spinifex for about a kilometer when Tom suddenly told us to stop. So we stopped in what seemed the middle of nowhere, got out, and suddenly I realized we were standing in a giant paintbox. The dried-up creek bed didn’t just have one color, it had dozens, all combinations of the basic four colors—dark red hematite, lemon yellow, white pipeclay and black manganese that looked like chewing gum spat out by dinosaurs and left to ossify. The colored stones and pebbles were strewn in every direction. You
Three days later my permit was turned down again: I realized I might not get my interviews. I had been circling carefully around both ochre and Arnhemland. I had talked to people who used it for hunting, and seen how it was still used for funerals. I had seen the colors that women use to imitate sacred patterns. But now it was time to meet some painters. “There’s a good mob down Barunga way: they do painting,” said a man I met at the Jabiru Social Club. So I called them. The Beswick and Barunga areas are in a protected area to the south-east of Kakadu. Could I come? How could I request a permit? I asked the arts coordinator, David Lane. “You’ve got a permit,” he said generously. “Come down when you like.” And yes, he confirmed, they did use natural ochres. “We’ll take you to find them if you want.”
I hired the only available four-wheel-drive in the area—a huge Nissan Patrol that made me feel I was Queen of the Road. When I arrived at Beswick, which was at the end of a red dust road so well made I felt a bit of a fraud in my grand car, I found a pleasant rural community of about five hundred people. There were picket fences and a well-tended playground and community center, with big houses set off the road and surrounded by grass and old mattresses. Beswick had been built in the 1940s when there was an emergency relocation of Aboriginal people from the coastal areas after the Japanese started bombing. Some had returned to Arnhemland but many had stayed, although some still dreamed of going home—and one of those dreamers was Tom Kelly.
Tom—a man in his sixties with a timeless etched face—was sitting on the porch of the main offices of Beswick. He had been a hand on a cattle station for many years but he had retired to Beswick to make and play didgeridoos—or “bamboos” as they call them in the creole that the people (who come from seven language groups) tend to use. “Tom’s one of the best,” David Lane told me. “He’s travelled the world with his didge.” Tom nodded matter-of-factly. “Been around,” he murmured. His group, the White Cockatoos, had been to many international music festivals, although now his dream was only to go back to live in Maningrida—the Arnhemland community where he was born—before his wife became too ill. Of all the places he had visited he’d liked America the best, especially meeting “them Indians,” who, he said, “also paint with ochre like us.”
He and David first showed me the didgeridoos. The stick-like instruments were covered in stories and pictures of lilies and file snakes and turtles in different ochre colors. One was decorated with a series of concentric red circles filled with white dashes, all on a black background. It represented water, Tom said, and the dashes were the effect of leaves falling on a waterhole. “It’s not country,” he said. “We don’t paint country on bamboos. Just pictures.”
He and two relatives—Abraham Kelly and Tango Lane Birrell— were to take me to find ochre from a nearby source called Jumped Up Creek, and suddenly my Nissan no longer seemed like an embarrassing overestimation of the terrain. Ten minutes out of town we turned off the main road onto what they said was a track, but I had my doubts. We churned up spiky spinifex for about a kilometer when Tom suddenly told us to stop. So we stopped in what seemed the middle of nowhere, got out, and suddenly I realized we were standing in a giant paintbox. The dried-up creek bed didn’t just have one color, it had dozens, all combinations of the basic four colors—dark red hematite, lemon yellow, white pipeclay and black manganese that looked like chewing gum spat out by dinosaurs and left to ossify. The colored stones and pebbles were strewn in every direction. You
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