The problem now facing my own Once upon a time is that Doctor Shah from the High Street Surgery has recently given me a filthy bill of health – cancer of the pancreas – which is me done and dusted. The big stuff goes forever, time ropes and loops and is never straight, that’s the real story of time. I’m writing about the other time, though, deep time. The story goes that the church brought time to us, and the church, if you let it, will take it away.
To begin – but there are too many beginnings for us Gondiwindi – that’s what we were bestowed and cursed with by the same shifty magic – an eternal Once upon a time. I am writing because the spirits are urging me to remember, and because the town needs to know that I remember, they need to know now more than ever before. A dictionary, even if this language isn’t mine alone, even it’s something we grow into and then living long enough, shrink away from. The dictionary from Elsie is why I’m writing it down – it was my introduction to the idea of recording, written just like the Reverend once wrote the births and baptisms at the Mission, like the station manager wrote rations at the Station and just like the ma’ams and masters wrote our good behaviour at the Boys’ Home – a list of words any fool can look up and be told the meaning. Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning To this day it remains my prized possession and I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China. What a companion the dictionary is – there are stories in that book that’ll knock your boots off. I think she knew she was planting a seed, germinating something inside me when she did that. It was my wife, Elsie, who bought me the first dictionary. Big thing, best thing she taught me was to learn to write the words too, taught me I wasn’t just a second-rate man raised on white flour and Christianity. To get water from the stones, you see?Īfter I met my beautiful wife, although beauty was the least of her, strong and fearless was the most of her – well she taught me lots of things.
So in a country where we weren’t really allowed to be, I decided to be. It seemed the most sensible thing to do was to learn to read well.
The one thing I thought I could control was my own head. I only wanted to decide for myself how I’d live it, but that was a big ask in a country that had a plan for me, already mapped in my veins since before I was born. Before I believed everything they taught me I thought when all were dead that all were gone, and so as a young fella I tried to find my place in this short life.
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