Rainbow Serpent, carved out the landscape, leaving tracks for water. Its voice was thunder, lightning its tongue; sacred trees were its ribs; a falling star, perhaps, the serpent’s eye as its body writhed in the dark. “You can see shadow standing, rain time—pretty colour,” one old woman told a land-rights judge in the 1983 Nicholson River land claim. In other words, a rainbow was the serpent’s body in the light. Valmae told me, “You know how [there are] all these books about Aboriginal things; they all true. We just couldn’t get over it. They real all right.”
Sylvia, eating her dinner, listening, now told me a secret: there was a plug on Palm Island, and if there was ever a war, the elders could remove it and the island would disappear.
“What would happen to all the people?” I asked her.
“They’d swim,” she said, as if I must be crazy.
I asked Sylvia what she wanted to do when she grew up. She wanted to work in the kitchen of the island’s new Police Club Youth Centre. Her seventeen-year-old sister, named Doris after her grandmother, wanted to be a doctor, as she had ever since she’d had a heart bypass as a twelve-year-old. But the Palm Island high school went up to only tenth grade and she had not matriculated. Another of Cameron’s nieces wanted to be a model; her mother told me she’d have to get her off the island before … and she held her knuckles to her cheek, meaning before her daughter’s looks were ruined by beatings.
Jane, who was in her forties, said she wanted to be a fighter pilot because when she played video games in a Townsville arcade she was so fast that people crowded around to watch. If not a fighter pilot, then she wanted to be a cook, and if not that, a security guard. But just then she was not working.
The inquest was scheduled to begin in two weeks and Chris Hurley would be appearing. Hurley had been transferred to the plum posting of Surfers Paradise, on the Gold Coast, Australia’s answer to Miami. He might have been enjoying police work amid the sun, surf, sex, revellers and retirees, but Queensland’s
Courier Mail
had reported that the senior sergeant was “suffering” as he waited to tell his side of the Palm Island story. “He is just gutted,” a source said. “Mostly he feels let down by the community. This bloke spent most of his career in Aboriginal communities trying to help people and he just feels they turned on him.”
Andrew Boe asked Elizabeth how she felt about going to the mainland to see the police testify.
“I’ll forgive them what they done, because Jesus said,
Love thine enemy
.”
“If you say that, then it doesn’t matter what happens,” Boe suggested.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elizabeth answered, “because it’s in God’s hands.”
“I’m not that patient,” he replied.
“Aboriginal people got no choice but to be patient. If I didn’t have God in my life …” She paused.
Elizabeth had something more than Christianity in her life: she had blackfella protocol. Although Chris Hurley had been relocated, Lloyd Bengaroo had been denied a transfer and was back working on the island, helping white cops make their arrests. Elizabeth had seen him in the street and he couldn’t look at her. Were she a different kind of person, she told me, she would take his clothes off his washing line and send an item to her relatives across the border from Doomadgee in the Northern Territory. They would use them to do magic that would make Bengaroo grow sick and die. But instead Elizabeth tried to love him and to be patient. In prayer meetings she had been praying for justice. “We want justice for Cameron … that’s to make his spirit free. We want the truth. We want to hear the truth.”
Elizabeth was both Christian and blackfella, New Testament and Old. She could afford to love her enemy because she believed fiercely in divine retribution. “I work for God, so he gotta work for me.” She had been doing a course in
Sylvia, eating her dinner, listening, now told me a secret: there was a plug on Palm Island, and if there was ever a war, the elders could remove it and the island would disappear.
“What would happen to all the people?” I asked her.
“They’d swim,” she said, as if I must be crazy.
I asked Sylvia what she wanted to do when she grew up. She wanted to work in the kitchen of the island’s new Police Club Youth Centre. Her seventeen-year-old sister, named Doris after her grandmother, wanted to be a doctor, as she had ever since she’d had a heart bypass as a twelve-year-old. But the Palm Island high school went up to only tenth grade and she had not matriculated. Another of Cameron’s nieces wanted to be a model; her mother told me she’d have to get her off the island before … and she held her knuckles to her cheek, meaning before her daughter’s looks were ruined by beatings.
Jane, who was in her forties, said she wanted to be a fighter pilot because when she played video games in a Townsville arcade she was so fast that people crowded around to watch. If not a fighter pilot, then she wanted to be a cook, and if not that, a security guard. But just then she was not working.
The inquest was scheduled to begin in two weeks and Chris Hurley would be appearing. Hurley had been transferred to the plum posting of Surfers Paradise, on the Gold Coast, Australia’s answer to Miami. He might have been enjoying police work amid the sun, surf, sex, revellers and retirees, but Queensland’s
Courier Mail
had reported that the senior sergeant was “suffering” as he waited to tell his side of the Palm Island story. “He is just gutted,” a source said. “Mostly he feels let down by the community. This bloke spent most of his career in Aboriginal communities trying to help people and he just feels they turned on him.”
Andrew Boe asked Elizabeth how she felt about going to the mainland to see the police testify.
“I’ll forgive them what they done, because Jesus said,
Love thine enemy
.”
“If you say that, then it doesn’t matter what happens,” Boe suggested.
“It doesn’t matter,” Elizabeth answered, “because it’s in God’s hands.”
“I’m not that patient,” he replied.
“Aboriginal people got no choice but to be patient. If I didn’t have God in my life …” She paused.
Elizabeth had something more than Christianity in her life: she had blackfella protocol. Although Chris Hurley had been relocated, Lloyd Bengaroo had been denied a transfer and was back working on the island, helping white cops make their arrests. Elizabeth had seen him in the street and he couldn’t look at her. Were she a different kind of person, she told me, she would take his clothes off his washing line and send an item to her relatives across the border from Doomadgee in the Northern Territory. They would use them to do magic that would make Bengaroo grow sick and die. But instead Elizabeth tried to love him and to be patient. In prayer meetings she had been praying for justice. “We want justice for Cameron … that’s to make his spirit free. We want the truth. We want to hear the truth.”
Elizabeth was both Christian and blackfella, New Testament and Old. She could afford to love her enemy because she believed fiercely in divine retribution. “I work for God, so he gotta work for me.” She had been doing a course in
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