Read Online Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing by Sally Morgan - Free Book Online

used to cook a kangaroo in the ashes, and we used to get wild potato and things for damper. We only had a kangaroo dog for hunting, no gun. The wild onion is really good; we used to mash it up raw and put it in the ashes, and he come up like a damper. And we used to get a goanna, cook it. That’s all the bush tucker belong to the Aborigine people.
    I used to watch the old people doing it and I learned from there. They teach me tribal law belong to whatever tribe, and they tell me all the different tribes and that I’m Banyjima woman, I not allowed to go over to Kurrama or any other language. I got to wait for them to invite me before I can say something about the Law that belongs to them.
    No blanket, just dig the sand and make a fire each side and sleeping in the sand, and get up in the morning. Summertime not bad — wintertime you got to have something to cover you up. Before the blanket come, we used to use the paperbark tree from the river. Make a fire each side in the camp where we going to sleep, dig the sand and cover us up with the sand.
    If a big general rain coming, two or three days one, we go stay in the cave, because we haven’t got a tent and things. We used to move to the big caves in the hill near the river. The old people had special ones they know. Whatever things we had there, we got to take them all up to the cave, stay in the cave for two or three days. Doesn’t matter we got clothes and blanket and things, we used to put ourblanket and things in the cave. We used to get spinifex and make a bed, so nothing would come up and bite the children. We’d take the food, put them all on the shelf in the wooden dish, keep it dry. When they go out, they cover them with a leaf or paperbark and put rocks round it to hold that thing down, so nothing will get in. We got to stay in that cave, and if we run out of meat or anything, all the men go out hunting through the rain. Just get a kangaroo and whatever they could find. And all the wife and the kids in the cave had a big fire going all the time in the doorway, keep it warm. When they come back to the cave, we’ll just cook it just there and eat it. They were still doing it when I was a little girl about ten years old, in the 1930s.
    Then, if rain stop, we just got to stay there one more days, let the ground get dry properly, then we move out back to the place where we were before. It got pretty muddy, and nice soft ground now, digging all the potatoes. Get a lot now. Some we put on the shelf in the cave, so no one will get it. We used to make a wooden dish and put them all there. When we hungry we know where to go to get them. Put some stores in the cave, and cover it with that paperbark. It stay there, no one would get it, because it’s on a shelf, way up. Even little wild onions, in the dish, the old people used to leave them there. When we’re really hungry and we couldn’t get anything we can go back and we got the food there, see. But we got plenty sweet stuff. Every day they used to get wild honey. They used to fill the little bowl and keep it all the time. Mix it with the waterand have a cool drink or something like that. No fridge, no anything. Only just have spears and boomerangs and whatever little wooden dish they make. That’s all they used to keep in there.
    No clothes, only kangaroo fur and bird feathers they used to get. They used to get the kangaroo tail, pull the strings all clean, and they used to keep him and let him get dry. They keep strings dry; when they want to use it they put it in the water, soak it, make it soft so they can tie something really tight, and then wax, from the spinifex. Use that one like glue for sticking handle and things — that’s to do the spears and everything. Or tomahawk; when they’re making it, they use that. It’s really good, too.
    They used to make wool out of their hair, and they used to make a skirt then. We used to do it too, when we was a little girl.