Bent Ngarta Jinny - Two sisters: Ngarta and Jukuna

To the families of the two sisters

CONTENTS

N o one knows how many people were living in the Great Sandy Desert before European settlement of Australia. The desert people belonged to several distinct language groups and for most of the year they were widely dispersed over the vast country. In the late dry season, which was the main ceremony time, people gathered in large numbers at major waterholes.

When early European settlement was taking place on the fringes of the continent, the desert people were untouched. Only when the cattle and sheep stations were established to the north of their country did rumours of change reach them. The people who lived along the rivers and in the ranges bore the brunt of the European push, because their lands provided just the sort of pasture the settlers needed for their stock.

Jukuna and Ngarta are two sisters who belong to the Walmajarri/Juwaliny language group. Walmajarri country stretches almost as far as the Fitzroy River to the north, but the family of these two sisters came from much further south, from the Great Sandy Desert proper, so that when the first Walmajarri people, the northern groups, were going to work on cattle stations, the southern groups were unaffected. However, even the bands most distant from one another were linked by marriage and consanguinity, and information about upheavals caused by the settlers of the cattle and sheep stations filtered back along the attenuated communication lines to reach even the remotest parts of the desert.

Much later, the people from further south in the Great Sandy Desert were gradually drawn into the vacuum created to their north.

The First World War came and went, and left no impression in the sandhills. Two decades later, the Second World War had faint reverberations. News reached the desert that the white people were fighting an enemy from overseas, and formations of aircraft appeared in the sky. These were probably on training exercises from air bases such as the one at Noonkanbah in the Kimberley. No one in the desert had heard of Adolf Hitler.

None of the desert people knew about the Royal Visit of the young Queen Elizabeth in 1953, or would have had any idea of what it was all about. The Melbourne Olympics three years later caused not a ripple in the lives of Ngarta, Jukuna and their family. Robert Menzies, of whom they knew nothing, was Prime Minister when Jukuna and later Ngarta emerged from the Great Sandy Desert. It would be much later before they first heard the word Australia and learned that they were not only Walmajarri, but also Australians.

PAT LOWE

PROLOGUE

When all but the last handful of Walmajarri people had left the desert, two Manyjilyjarra brothers came into their country from the east. These men were from a family of outlaws, men who lived apart from other people and defied the law, who preyed on their fellows, killing without reason, abducting women and discarding them. Other men feared them, and for a long time they got away with their crimes.

Originally there were four brothers. Tirinja was the eldest. The others were Yungangi, Nyuljurra and Yawa. The first three brothers travelled together and were responsible for the deaths of a number of people. Eventually Nyuljurra was killed in a vengeance fight somewhere near Balgo.

Tirinja and Yungangi then travelled together for a time, until they were pursued by the relatives of a man they had killed. These men caught up with Yungangi and killed him. His elder brother Tirinja escaped by climbing a hill where no one could reach him, and later got away and went to find his youngest brother, Yawa. Some people say that Yawa was a good man, different from the other three, but under Tirinjas influence he took part in the same violent and murderous activities.

Tirinja had a son and a daughter in his group. Once, when he was displeased with the boy, Tirinja and his brother lifted him by his hands and feet and held him spread-eagled over the fire, face down, to punish him. The burn scars marked his forehead and chest for the rest of his life.

Every now and then, news of yet another killing reached the scattered bands. No one had the power to control the killers or bring them to punishment. They moved, uninvited, into country that was not their own, and eventually they went into Walmajarri country.

One old Walmajarri man and his two wives were staying at a waterhole. They were related to the people of Japingka, in whose country they were living, and they kept in touch with these relatives, meeting them from time to time at one waterhole or another. A family from Japingka was camping some way to the north, and every morning when they looked towards the south they would see the smoke from fires lit by this trio and know that all was well with them.

One day, no smoke appeared above the horizon, and the people wondered what was wrong. Perhaps the old man and his wives had moved to another place. Even so, in a single day they could not possibly have travelled so far that their fires would not be visible. The following day, again there was no early morning smoke. The people were puzzled and uneasy.

A little boy named Kurnti was playing in the sandhills not far from his mothers camp when he saw something that struck terror into his young heart. A woman was approaching across the flat, and though there was something about her that seemed familiar, that was not possible, for she was all white. Worse, she was making a terrible wailing sound. The boy turned and ran down screaming to his mothers camp.

Theres a Mamu! Theres a Mamu coming up! he yelled, breathless. Its all white! A Mamu was a spirit much feared by the people of the sandhills.

The boys mother climbed the sandhill to have a look for herself, and at once recognised the old mans elder wife, and saw that she had covered her face and body with clay mud from the waterhole, which had dried to a whitish colour on her skin. This told Kurntis mother that the woman was in mourning. She was travelling on her own it was clear that something dreadful had happened to her husband and his other wife.

When the woman reached the camp, she wailed in anguish and struck herself on the head until someone restrained her. Then she told the family what had taken place. A few days before, Tirinja had appeared suddenly at the camp, brandishing his weapons. Before the family had time to collect itself, he had driven a spear into her husbands side. The stranger had then seized hold of the mans young wife, and forced her to go away with him. The older woman was left behind with her wounded husband.

The old man was not dead, but the spear had gone right through his body, and he lay on the sand helpless and in great pain. In vain his wife tried to pull out the spear, but it was firmly lodged and she had not enough strength to shift it. Her efforts did nothing but increase the old mans distress. She could only stay and suffer with her husband until he died. Shocked and grieving, the woman struck herself on the head with a rock until her own blood ran. Then she took mud from the waterhole and smeared it over her face and body in the custom of a woman newly widowed, and set off alone to the north, in search of her kinsfolk.