Regional Stories
Agnes Yamboong Armstrong, Jalinem Per Henningsgaard
‘Left! Steady!’ my father barked from the back of the canoe. As our small craft stabilised and narrowly cleared the point of land that divided the river into two smaller streams, he added, quieter now, ‘Yes, good. Steady paddling into deeper water.’ I paused my paddling in order to reach out with my right hand and touch the leaves of a bush that stretched over the water from the sandy bank. We were that close to running ashore. But my father was right: the water in this channel was deeper than any we had encountered further upstream. Listening for the sound of my father’s paddle softly cleaving the water’s surface, I resumed my regular stroke. Eighteen years later – and 17,000 kilometres away – I remember what he said: ‘Steady paddling into deeper water.’ It’s a metaphor, of course, but for what I don’t know. My father certainly didn’t mean it as a metaphor, so I can’t ask him, either. A painting by Agnes Yamboong Armstrong evokes this memory in me. Her painting, which is exhibited at the art gallery on the university campus where I work, is titled Jalinem. It depicts creek flows from the flooded Ord River in the wet season. The Ord River is a 600-kilometre river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river I paddled with my father was the Mississippi River, which is 3,000 kilometres longer than the Ord River and half a world away in the United States. But there’s something about the island at the centre of Yamboong Armstrong’s flooded river – 49
