Talking Sideways: Stories and Conversations from Finniss Springs

Praise for Talking Sideways

‘The story of Finniss Springs reads like a fable. An inter-racial utopian dream set in the Australian desert unravels when the patriarch dies, families turn on each other, mining companies and lawyers circle like predators. There is manipulation and venality and violence, decency and courage and resilience. It’s telling is a testament to the long friendship between the authors, and a revelation of the complexities and hazards of the Aboriginal preference for ‘talking sideways’. Talking Sideways is a unique, enthralling and important contribution to the growing literature of place in Australia.’

Kim Mahood, author of Position Doubtful

‘Talking Sideways is not just a great yarn. Rather it’s hundreds of sly little yarns all braiding into a big net that catches and carries a staggering bulk of knowledge about old, deep Australia. And about friendship. More than just a book, it’s a new kind of literature, a big, battered vehicle that has been hot-rodded by two crafty sidekicks – one indigenous, one interloper – venturing into a world of wanting, wishing and remembering that they have resolved to encompass together.’

Ross Gibson, Centenary Professor of Creative & Cultural Research at the University of Canberra

‘A lesson in strategy, acceptance and perseverance, and a significant story for Aboriginal people negotiating the many challenges we inherit.’

Jared Thomas, William and Margaret Geary Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art and Culture, South Australian Museum

Reg Dodd, an Arabunna descendant born at Finniss Springs, is a natural storyteller. At various stages of his life he’s been a stockman, a train inspector, a heritage officer, a photographer, a singer and a tour guide.

Malcolm McKinnon is an artist, curator, writer and filmmaker who has worked with Reg Dodd on a series of projects spanning almost thirty years. He shares a deep attachment to country around Finniss Springs.

CONTENTS

Map

Prologue On Talking Sideways

Chapter 1 An Arabunna Family Story

Chapter 2 The Love of a Difficult Place

Chapter 3 Growing Up Two Ways

Chapter 4 Time Travelling

Chapter 5 The Mission, the Saddle and the Bottle

Chapter 6 Trouble

Chapter 7 The Blow-up and the Aftermath

Chapter 8 Mixed Blessings

Chapter 9 Staying Close to the Ground

Chapter 10 Unlikely Alliances

Chapter 11 Imagining the Future

Chapter 12 Creation Stories, Personal Stories

Chapter 13 Sharing a Song

Authors’ Notes

Timeline

Endnotes

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Finniss Springs is an area of almost 2000 square kilometres, bordering Lake Eyre in the far north of South Australia. This map is based on one produced by CartoGIS Services, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU, and is reproduced with permission.

Lena Murray and Esther Dodd at Finniss Springs, c. 1950. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Lena Bowden.

Prologue

On Talking Sideways

Reg Dodd

This is the way it is with us mob: we don’t talk directly. I’m like that with my family. I can’t go straight up to my brothers to talk about important things – I never talk to them directly in that way. The ones of my generation, we were brought up so that we talk kind of sideways, because that’s the respectful way. That’s the true Aboriginal way. There are only certain people that you can talk to. And if you talk to the ones you’re not supposed to talk with, then you can tell there’s something terribly wrong.

If I’m arguing with you, then really I can’t talk to you directly. I’ll be growling at this other bloke over here, and he’ll be taking all of that and then talking to you. And you have to respond to him. You can’t respond directly to me. I’m talking to you but I’m not doing it directly. That’s a part of our culture, and it’s hard to change that.

The knowledge that gets transferred through different generations of our people is passed on in a casual kind of way. No one tells you to sit down and listen, like when you’re at school or something. Usually it’s just an aside, or maybe something told in a storytelling form. Sometimes a story has a message that isn’t immediately obvious, but you work things out – like a jigsaw puzzle where you’re putting the pieces together in your mind. You get that knowledge over time because you’re chosen to receive it. And you have to prove you’re worthy of receiving that information.

Malcolm McKinnon

As a young bloke, I was too often a smartarse. I felt confident to express a view on all manner of things about which, actually, I was largely ignorant. Sometimes, if I wasn’t mouthing off an opinion, I’d be asking questions that were misdirected and inappropriate.

Growing older and wiser, I learned that in every culture there are a lot of important things that people don’t talk about. Or at least they don’t talk about them easily, and certainly not with strangers who are asking impertinent questions. In talking about a complicated place like Finniss Springs, there are always big things left unsaid. I’ve learned to listen for the gaps and the silences, to notice the things unspoken and to contemplate their meanings. Coming and going from this place over a period of thirty years, I’ve occasionally experienced revelations and epiphanies. I guess these things have only come to me when I’ve been ready to receive them, and I’ve had to learn how to wait.¹

The other thing I’ve grown to understand is that I don’t actually need to understand everything about this place and its stories: it’s fine, really, for some things to remain doubtful and mysterious. I’m not being wilfully ignorant: rather, I’m acknowledging that this is not a place for me to own. I’ve learned to approach Finniss Springs with humility and wonder.

Reg Dodd & Malcolm McKinnon

The writing of this book has itself been an exercise in talking sideways, undertaken episodically over several years. Intense periods of conversation have been interspersed with longer periods for reflection and evaluation. The bulk of the text comes from recordings of Reg at Finniss Springs or at other locations in the bush outside Marree. The country itself is a prompt for the telling of stories, as well as the backdrop.² Malcolm has written additional parts of the book that provide background to Reg’s stories. He also relates some of his own stories from time spent at Finniss Springs. We’ve created this book through a collaborative process, trading ideas and debating how best to tell various stories. Essentially, this is a book developed through conversation. While this is largely a conversation between the two of us, it is also an extension of a larger, ongoing conversation that Reg has been carrying on for many years, as he’s reached out to create understanding across the blackfella/whitefella cultural divide.³

~

Finniss Springs is a mythical place, constructed – and perpetually reconstructed – through the telling of epic stories about its history and significance. They’re seductive, these stories: exotic, complex, politically charged and linked inextricably to a landscape of subtle but intoxicating beauty.⁴

This is not a straightforward account of a people and a place. It’s true, on one level, that there’s an underlying hierarchy of power within this story that is classically predictable, wherein the interests of colonising pastoralists trump the interests of Aboriginal owners, and then, later on, the interests of mining companies trump pretty much everyone else’s. Despite this, Aboriginal people somehow find ways to maintain a hold on their particular patch of country. But within this basic historical narrative there are complicating and counterintuitive twists and turns, where the identities and allegiances of particular characters transform over time, and the telling of ‘one true story’ is highly contentious.

Most of the people connected with Finniss Springs have complex, hybrid identities. There are blackfellas who are also, in some part, whitefellas. There are winners who are also, to some extent, losers. There are people of Arabunna descent who might also be of Dieri, Antakarinja, Adynyamathanha, Kuyani or Arrernte descent, so the politics of Aboriginal identity here is tricky and contentious. This is a story in which culture and identity are inherently dynamic. It’s also the story of a place where enormous changes have occurred within the span of living memory, encompassing events both miraculous and cataclysmic (sometimes all at the same time, depending upon particular viewpoints).⁵

This is a story of theft and loss, but also of reclamation and redemption. Here are family feuds and enmities that might not seem out of place in the Old Testament, or in a Greek tragedy. Here are people banished and then returned from the wilderness, people blessed and people cursed, people with complex allegiances, people professing particular beliefs and values but then behaving in a manner that seems contrary to these, people forever marked by a difficult history but somehow always looking towards a better future for their children.

Finniss Springs is an instructive and inspirational place. We think that it’s useful to tell this story because it reveals some typical complexities of Aboriginal identity, family history and politics. As well, it illustrates how a place can absorb the impacts of pastoralists, missionaries, governments and miners, and still somehow survive as Aboriginal land. Finally, we believe it’s important to show how blackfella and whitefella histories intersect and tangle up within stories of a place like Finniss Springs, often in startling ways.⁶

We also understand that Finniss Springs is not merely a historical site: in spite of appearances, it is also a work in progress. And so we’re speculating on how the story of Finniss Springs might evolve in the future.⁷

~

Telling this story requires a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, there’s a need for discretion, for respect for privacy, and for recognition that certain stories and knowledge were never intended for the public realm. On the other, there’s a desire to prompt consideration of matters often confused and insufficiently talked about, including things that are complex and contentious within blackfella, whitefella and cross-cultural discussions. To put it another way, there are silences that we want to respect and leave well alone, and others that we wish to challenge. This latter category mainly comprises things we believe are frequently cause for misunderstanding, and also sometimes a convenient excuse to avoid difficult and important questions. We’re not setting out to offend, and we’re not being provocative just for the sake of being so. We generally endeavour to name the people who appear within our story. In doing so, we’re deliberately countering the anonymity that many Australian history stories assign to Aboriginal characters. However, there are also instances within the book where we’ve decided not to name particular people, out of respect for family and community sensitivities.

Many people have died in the course of the events related in this book. For us, an important motivation for telling these stories of Finniss Springs is to acknowledge the human toll incurred in looking after this country. It’s easy to say: ‘Well, people die all the time.’ And it’s true, tragically, that Aboriginal people have a scandalously high mortality rate, and reduced life expectancy compared with other Australians. But we also know that there have been too many lives wasted, frustrated or cut short by all the troubles that have played out around Finniss Springs in the decades since the closure of the Aboriginal mission more than fifty years ago. We must remember all the people who have passed on, and the people whose lives have gone off the rails. We tell this story with respect for all those people and their families and friends who have given something of themselves in defence of Finniss Springs, and for the generations of people, past, present and future, connected with this place.⁸

Reg Dodd, Finniss Springs, 1949. Photograph by Andrew Pearce, reproduced courtesy of the Marree Arabunna Peoples’ Committee.

Chapter 1

An Arabunna Family Story

Reg Dodd

A blackfella in a tartan cap

We were always classified as Aboriginal people, even if we had just a speckled inkspot of Aboriginal blood. It didn’t matter if we had dark skin, like some of my family, or if we looked more like a whitefella, like my older brother Norm, for example. That’s just how it was in those days when I grew up. We grew up knowing we were blackfellas, and we didn’t have any choice about that.

I always say I have a foot in each camp. I’m an Arabunna person and I also have Scottish blood, and I’m proud of both, because what happened here at Finniss Springs with my Scottish grandfather and my Arabunna granny was pretty unique. The outcomes of that relationship were beneficial not just to my immediate family but also to many other Arabunna and to a lot of other Aboriginal people too. I would say that pretty much all of the surviving Arabunna people today can be very thankful for what Grandfather and Granny did here, because most of their parents or grandparents come from here too. They were either born here or else they came and lived here, so in some way or other they all have a strong connection to this place. From the time that my grandparents came here in 1918, and then continuing right through the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, many Aboriginal people came here. And not just Arabunna people, but many other Aboriginal people too – Dieri, Kokatha, Antakarinja, Adynyamathanha or Arrernte.¹ Even people from down in the Riverland or over west on the Nullarbor – there are people from those areas who have a link to Finniss Springs as well.

I do think about my Scottish ancestry – maybe I’d like to go over there to visit one day. We’ve actually met relatives from Scotland who have come out here to discover something about their Australian family, and they’ve invited us to come over. We’ve had relatives out here wanting to take a picture of my grandfather’s grave. One lady came here, and I could see she was the spitting image of our cousin, Auntie Flora’s daughter Joyce. I showed her photo to my sister-in-law Blanche, and she said: ‘That looks exactly like Joycie!’ We’ve had a few Warren and Hogarth family people come here from different places, all related to the Scottish side of our family. It’d be interesting to visit Scotland, but whether I’ll ever actually make that trip I’m not sure. The area they’re talking about is Morayshire, up in the north. That’d be a big trip for an old blackfella like me!²

A peculiar creation story

Site map of Finniss Springs Homestead and Aboriginal Mission. Reproduced courtesy of McDougall & Vines, Heritage Consultants.

For me, Finniss Springs is home. I was born here, I’ve lived in this country all my life and I’ve never left here. I have a traditional connection to Arabunna country through my mother, but Finniss Springs was also a pastoral property that was set up by my grandfather, Francis Dunbar Warren, who was of Scottish descent. My grandfather bought this property when he sold his share of Anna Creek Station, up the track a bit north-west of here, right in the heart of Arabunna country. He’d taken up with my grandmother, Nora Beralda, who was a full-blood Arabunna woman. They had a family and then they came down here in 1918, first to the original Finniss homestead out beside the springs at Hermit Hill; later, in 1922 they moved south-west a little bit, to this place they called New Well, which is where the station property is now. So I have a traditional connection as an Arabunna descendant and also a direct connection with the European history of this area through my immediate family.

Embroidery panel from the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry project, 2012–2014. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Michelle Murray.

Grandfather sold his share of Anna Creek to his uncle because he wanted to set up a home for his own family, and he wanted his children to be able to have an education. They first approached the government about setting up a school here at Finniss but, in the end, it was the missionaries who were willing to come out here to educate the kids.³ In 1939, the year before I was born, they set up the first school out here in an old army tent. So this is where we grew up and where we were educated.

My great-grandfather John Warren was a pastoral commissioner back in the 1860s. He came up here on one of his trips, along with his nephew, who was a surveyor. When they got up to Strangways Springs, about a hundred kilometres up the track from here, they found some fine pastoral land. They took up 500 square miles of property at Strangways and set up their head station. John Warren went back to Adelaide and eventually became a state parliamentarian, leaving my grandfather and his uncle, Thomas Hogarth, to run the property. Later on they shifted the head station to Anna Creek, but it was at Strangways that they first established a working relationship with Arabunna people. It was also at Strangways where my grandfather formed a relationship with my grandmother; they went on to have seven children.⁴

Traditionally, Strangways Springs was one of the main Arabunna campsites because there was plenty of water and shelter there. West of Strangways there were open tablelands. Strangways had special significance for Arabunna people, just like Hermit Hill here, and Curdimurka a little way up the track – these were some of our main camping sites, and families were always living there. A lot of Arabunna people were born at these places, and there are important ceremonial sites within these areas. These places are interconnected through mythological stories.⁵ Also, at certain times of the year, depending on the rain and the seasons, there’d be particular plants that could be harvested in these areas, like aritji (mulga beans), yalka (bush onions) and thungka (bush tomatoes). So the old people would come down for food and for ceremony. People were always moving through these areas, passing on knowledge and skills across different generations.

The relationship between my grandfather’s family and the Arabunna people at Strangways and Anna Creek was very unusual, especially in that my grandfather married an Arabunna woman and then stayed with her and his family in this area for the rest of his life. He’s buried down here at Finniss Springs – he didn’t want to be buried down south with the rest of his European family. Most other white men never acknowledged their Aboriginal families or made that commitment to stay here.

Right from the early days, Arabunna people were providing support for my grandfather and great-grandfather’s pastoral enterprise. They worked as sheep-herders looking after 50,000 sheep in virgin pastoral country, north of where the dog fence is now. In return for this work, Grandfather’s family offered some protection and security for those Arabunna people.

One important thing is that my grandfather and his family accepted advice from the old Arabunna people about special sites that need to be looked after and protected. At Hermit Hill, for instance, there are important ceremonial sites that form a part of Aboriginal stories stretching right across the country, from this area here all the way through to country north of Brisbane. When the Overland Telegraph came through here in the 1870s, followed by the railway in the 1880s, the construction gangs set up a work camp only a few hundred metres from an important men’s site near Hermit Hill. That would have had an enormous impact because it would have stopped Arabunna people from performing important ceremonies there. In normal circumstances there would have been a big fight between the construction workers and the Arabunna people, but this didn’t happen. My understanding is that Grandfather’s family advised the Arabunna men and the construction workers on how to deal with this conflict, because the construction camp was relocated and the ceremonies were also moved to a more private area, all without any fighting taking place. This was a very unusual situation in those days, where someone had the respect and authority to be able to mediate a solution like this.

I know that my great-grandfather and then my grandfather after him were great advocates for the interests of Aboriginal people. For example, my great-grandfather spoke in parliament against the proposed removal of Aboriginal people from their lands in the top end, which was then part of the South Australian colony. In 1911 he also spoke against the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. I think that it was because of this kind of support that my grandfather was able to marry my grandmother, and to have the marriage accepted by the senior Arabunna people at the time.

Unusual relations

Francis Dunbar Warren was born here in Australia. His family had come out to South Australia from Scotland, and Francis was the seventh son, born at the family property called Springfield, at Mount Crawford, near Adelaide.⁶

My grandmother Nora Beralda was a proper tribal woman, and traditionally she had a high status among the Arabunna people through her connection to certain important stories. Beralda means ‘the moon’, and she was known as ‘little moon’ – parala kupa in Arabunna language – and my great-grandmother was parala parnda, meaning ‘big moon’. Their stories also relate to the fire – thirka in Arabunna language. When we were born we had to be placed on the thirka – that warm hearth beside the fire – because we were the thirka family mob. Granny was of the highest status within all of that, and I think she was one of the people who really held Arabunna society together.

I know plenty of other white people who had kids with Aboriginal women but they kept it as quiet as possible. They wouldn’t openly support that family because they would have been branded as ‘nigger-lovers’. But my grandfather and great-grandfather, because of their unusual status, were able to do that. They had credentials and confidence, so that Grandfather was able to go out and do what he wanted to do. It would take a very brave man with a strong sense of right and wrong to be able to do that. There were many kids all around the country with Aboriginal mothers and white fathers, but their fathers never acknowledged those kids or took any responsibility for them. And so my grandfather was unusually humane, in that he supported his family all along and he was determined always to stay with his Arabunna family.

Francis Warren, Finniss Springs, early 1950s. Photograph reproduced courtesy of Lena Bowden.

In my lifetime, I can see a parallel to when old Dick Nunn came up to manage Anna Creek Station in the 1950s.⁷ He took up with an Aboriginal woman; he used to travel around with her in his car. Many of the neighbouring pastoralists were scandalised, but they never had the courage to challenge him about his relationship. The other thing about Dick Nunn was that rather than have his Aboriginal stockmen having a feed down at the creek, he had them eating in the kitchen, at the same table as the non-Aboriginal stockmen. They were rare people who were brave enough to do that. Those kinds of people weren’t dependent on other pastoralists, and they were prepared to live with the stigma of being seen as ‘nigger-lovers’. But at the same time, I know that there were some people who had to sell up their property and shift somewhere else because they were constantly criticised and attacked about their friendly relationships with Aboriginal people.

Grandfather’s relationship with the Arabunna people was a two-way thing. He helped the Arabunna people understand the white man’s ways, and told them what they had to do to get along. At the same time, he took advice from senior Arabunna people about the things that he needed to understand in order to live and work in Arabunna country. Here at Finniss Springs he had a special room in his house with nothing except a spear and a boomerang up on the wall. That room was for him to meet with the Aboriginal elders who were travelling through here, because we’re located on significant trade routes running west to east and north to south. He would meet with those people and provide food for them on their way through. Even today, some of those old Oak Valley people from over in the western part of South Australia remember how Grandfather used to do that. So there would have been discussions between Grandfather and those senior Aboriginal men that I’m sure wouldn’t have happened unless he’d had a certain status.

In his journals Grandfather sometimes wrote in Arabunna language, especially if he was referring to birds and animals or to certain places. I remember him writing about how, up at Anna Creek, all the crabholes were full after the rains and there were a lot of kudnatyilti running around – that was those water-hens. So he used Arabunna language in that way.

When Grandfather came down from Anna Creek, his intention wasn’t actually to settle here at Finniss. He was going to buy Beltana Station, down south of here. But when they got here, old Granny said: ‘I’m not going any further – this is my country here,’ so Grandfather bought this place. Otherwise he would have been going on to Beltana by himself.

My mum, Amy, was born on the western side of Mount Dutton, out at the camp at Warndilanha. This was also a place where they used to put the horses from Anna Creek during drought times. She told me that she was carrying her younger brother, my Uncle Angus, on her back when they came down here from Anna Creek. There were some old fellas that journeyed down from Anna Creek too, just to help all the Aboriginal people get settled here. Old Tommy O’Donoghue was a senior man who came down to help people settle in. Tommy was the grandfather of Paddy Jones, who I’ll tell you about later. Tommy had traditional knowledge of this country, so he would have told people about the places where they could do particular things and the ceremonial sites they had to avoid. There would have been smoking ceremonies to cleanse the bad spirits from particular areas so that people could live here.⁸

Those old Arabunna blokes and some other Aboriginal people who were working for Grandfather, they were originally the sheep-herders up at Strangways and at Anna Creek. As I mentioned, at one time they had about 50,000 sheep they had to look after. In the daytime they’d tail them out and then at night-time they’d put them in a yard to keep them safe from the dingoes. They’d also dig big trenches and cut down lots of verbine bush and clover and bury it so as to create a kind of silo. Then they could dig it out at some later time to feed the sheep when they had them yarded up, or in dry times when there wasn’t enough fresh feed on the ground. I also know that those old fellas would sometimes cut down branches from big rivergum trees and burn them and then cover them over with dirt, and then they’d come back and collect the charcoal. The charcoal would eventually be burned in the blacksmith’s workshop on the station, when they were making or sharpening their tools. This was still happening in my day, actually, because I can remember how they’d sharpen knives on the sandstone and us kids would have to turn the handle for hours, until it felt like your arm was going to drop off.

I know too that Grandfather had input into changing traditional Arabunna laws and practices, because they were too harsh within the new situation that people were living in after the pastoralists arrived.

The first incident I always talk about was when old Yumpy Jack, one of the sheep-herders, was a young fella, only a teenager. This happened out at Kardipirla Warru Warrapukanha, which is also called Lake Cadibarrawirracanna, between William Creek and Coober Pedy. Yumpy was tailing the sheep and they wandered off over the sand dunes. Unbeknown to him, on the opposite side of the sand dune was a campsite where men were doing their ceremonial business. Yumpy wandered over the dune and stumbled straight into the men’s camp. The