River People

A Book that Opens is being “written” by poets Paul Collis (Barkindji), Jen Crawford and Paul Magee of the University of Canberra, Australia, along with five indigenous interlocutors from Bourke and Brewarrina, in Barkindji and Nyempa Country, outback New South Wales. The work comprises 11 chapters of conversations about river management and traditional culture, which were taped and later transcribed into playscript form. The cast varies by chapter, and visitors pop in at times. In this, the 10th chapter of the book, traditional knowledge-holders, Aunty Gertie Dorigo (Barkindji) and Aunty Margaret Knight (Barkindji/Kunya), are in conversation with Jen Crawford in North Bourke, looking out over a large, scrubby field edged by the massive overflow of the Baarka (aka Darling River) in flood. Also present is Rina Kikuchi, a professor of poetry from Shiga University with an interest in water imagery, who translates women’s poetry from Japanese with Jen, and her daughter, Layna Onji. The chapter opens with Gertie and Margaret talking about a time—the recent past—before state borders came and separated their people into Queensland or New South Wales. Conversation turns to fishing on the river in the Aunties’ youth, a mysterious dog-headed water-beast called “Mundaguddah,” and then to the locations and use of local foodstuffs and medicines. Some emerge from the landscape and are noted in the course of this speaking, a frillneck lizard among them. Experiences of dispossession, racism, impoverishment and ongoing barring from Country are threaded through and form the backdrop for a discussion of the Queen’s visit to Bourke, living in tin shacks just beside the town pound and the continuing transmission of vital cultural and historical knowledge. The formatting and suggestive photos and drawings—by Emma Phillips, Katie Hayne and Ursula Frederick—are intended to make the reader feel like they are in the presence of the people speaking.