The mission at Ulgundahi was run by a white manager, who was the minister and school teacher. A jack-of-all-trades, he was unskilled. The United Aborigine Mission, white people, ran the mission. We were Free Presbyterian because missionaries from that church had established themselves on that part of the coast. As the missions travelled up the coast finding Blacks along the way, which ever religion found them, claimed them. Some of our relations became Catholics, others were Church of England, and yet another lot were Free Presbyterian. So although we were a tribal group, there was a disbursement of religions amongst us. It was ridiculous …

My grandfather, who spoke six languages and was central in initiation programs right up to Tabulum near the border of Queensland, and down the coast, and particularly up in the mountains, was talked-down-to by the whites at the mission. When I was a young child, he would be missing for a while, away doing ceremonies. Then he’d be back and catching up on the role he had left behind. The sadness of it was that  because he could not speak English he could not communicate with the authorities, the white people. A person had to speak English or else was ‘stupid’. He was treated almost as if he didn’t know anything, as if he was inferior to them. They didn’t know him as we knew him …

I was brought up speaking the Yagl language, a dialect of the Bungulung or Bungalun. ‘Koori’ is a bastardisation of ‘Goori’, which is from our language. We would say Goori when talking about one another. A more specific and descriptive term is ‘Neegra’. White people are ‘Gubba’ in Bungulum language. The more descriptive term is Yarrali: using it means we can put a lot of emphasis on what the person is like, good or bad. ‘Gub’ is not a complimentary term …

You can do a lot with language. You can laugh and joke about it and with it. You cannot do this when one is thinking in one way and the other person is thinking in another. Some words and ideas lose their meaning when translated into another language. Once, when I was working at Yamba, a seaside resort up the north coast of New South Wales, my sister and I were having a good old laugh in the kitchen over the washing up. We were laughing and joking in our language. Elva Hespe, the owner of the kiosk, and who gave me important encouragement, heard us and came in to join the laughter. She asked: ‘What are you laughing about?’ We translated it. She couldn’t see the funny point. Nor could I. It had lost all meaning in the translation.

White people in Australia are only just beginning to realise that they have lost a means of communication by not learning Aboriginal languages. In Central Australia some of the professional people, particularly doctors and nurses, have gone along to be taught to speak in the language of the Pitjatjantjara people. Some missionaries learnt the language so were able to communicate not only with the young people, but the older people as well. They got a lot more response from that because in our way of life the elders of the Aboriginal people make the decisions, not the young people. Yet mostly when people in authority (such as police officers) came – they would talk to the kids, asking them to translate to the elders. The whites expected the kids to carry on that responsibility. Yet if the white people had thought clearly, they would have realised it was inappropriate. White people don’t give their children the responsibility or power to sort out the parent’s financial matters or their social situation. White people make those decisions for themselves and the kids have to follow. They reverse the role when it comes to Aboriginal people …

Particularly now that I am over 50-years-of-age, I think about the conditions on the mission (particularly the institutional diet) and how they affected the health of our people. Aboriginal people generally die much younger than white people, although my own family has a good record. My grandfather didn’t die until he was 98. My grandmother was older too. My aunty died in her sixties, a little younger than my grandmother, her mother. Nonetheless Imay have been affected by the amount of sugar and salt given to us on the mission. It was not unusual to have three or four teaspoonsful of sugar in tea. Salt was used by the spoonful. Now, I do not cook in the way taught at the mission. Salt and refined sugar are out.

Our people did a lot of cooking with herbs, preparing foods in bushtucker. But being taken from where they lived, cramped together on the mission, and told what to do or what not to do, meant the old ways disappeared. My granny made flour out of black beans, put nuts in it and baked little Johnny cakes from the natural ingredients out of the bush. She took the poison out, she knew what to do, how to do it. Then refined flour, not wholemeal, was introduced by the authorities, and white sugar, not raw sugar. 

I have seen a rations list stating we were supposed to receive fruit and vegetables. We didn’t. All we had was meat, sugar, flour – and bags of salt. We were never given fish or eggs. But we were luckier than people who were farther out west, who suffered from scabies and other health problems. We caught eels in the river, and ate kangaroo, and goannas, carpet snakes and porcupine. It wasn’t wild, it was our food – to supplement the ‘white’ diet. Bushtucker helped us survive.

The Clarence River ran past our island. There were oysters on the mangroves, and we ate gibbras, the worms out of the mangrove trees. When the mullets came up the river, there were hundreds of fish. My grandmother and the other old women recognised the signs and knew they were coming. The gibbras – worms – were a sign. My grandmother sent us out to trap them. Then there was dancing and celebration, because it meant there was a feed.

There were other celebrations, but because I was young, I could not be a part of them. Like my grandfather, my grandmother was involved in ceremonies. The men went out bush and certain women went out to prepare, too. They would not take a child. But when they had a corroboree or dancing, we were a part of it. I did not understand fully, but I knew that we celebrated because they had come back and were a part of the community again. Often this was after an initiation program. The death of the elders who were so involved in the ceremonies, and changes in Aboriginal lifestyles, has meant that this part of our past has been covered up or lost. The philosphy was that children should be seen and not heard. You didn’t tell children until they could accept the responsibility of what they were being told. By then,it was too late. The intervention of missionaries has meant that many of the stories and ceremonies have not been passed down.

Joyce Clague (c) 1993

Born on 22 July 1938, Joyce Clague worked as assistant investigation officer in the Office of the New South Wales Ombudsman. She was an inugural member of the New South Wales Women’s Advisory Council to the Premier, serving two terms, and from 1987 served as a member and treasurer of the Metropolitan Land Council. When she was nominated for an MBE her father said she should accept it on behalf of the Aboriginal people. She did, finding it useful when acting as a referee, and preferring to interpet it as M(ore) B(lack) than E(ver).

This is an extract from ‘Staying to the End’ published in Glorious Age – Growing Older Gloriously, Artemis Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 1993 (Jocelynne A. Scutt, ed.).