Acknowledgements
A sincere thanks from both of us to all those people who helped us with advice, time and information, particularly all those who are included in the list of participants. We hope that you will enjoy this small contribution to the Koorie history of the area. Thanks also to Harvey Johnston of NPWS (NSW) for his patience, to the staff of Pioneer Park, Griffith, for allowing us to include a number of photographs in this report, to AIATSIS and Balranald Local Aboriginal Land Council for additional photographs, and to our families for their help and support.
Copyright in this report is vested with National Parks and Wildlife Service (NSW). All participants, however, retain rights to their own intellectual property.
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this booklet contains images of deceased persons.
Reprinted July 2023 | Graphic Design work by The Articulate Pear Pty Ltd
Robert (Bob) Harris, Griffith 32-34
Gordon Kirby, Dareton
Christine Johnson, Robinvale 39-43 Clancy Charles, Griffith
Grace Gowans, Darlington Point 49-52
Jean Cliteur, Darlington Point 53-55
Pam Edwards, Darlington Point 56-58
Heather Edwards, Darlington Point 59-60
Florence Carroll, Darlington Point 61-63
Beryl Smith, Darlington Point 64-65
Shannon Smith, Darlington Point 66
Alice Williams, Griffith 67-72
Jenny Goolagong, Griffith 73
Stanley White, Darlington Point 74
Dot Ingram, Leeton 75-77
Dennis Ingram, Leeton 78-81
Ossie Ingram, Narrandera 82-84
Doreen Christian, Griffith 85
Theresa Edwards, Balranald 86
Tommy Lyons, Narrandera 87-88
Neville Lyons, Narrandera 89-90
Carrol Higgins, Narrandera 91
Jim Ingram (Snr), Leeton 92-95
Pat Undy, Darlington Point 96-98
Leanne Undy, Darlington Point 101
Mary Briggs, Shepparton 102-103
Len (Bushy) Kirby 104
Archie Bamblett, Sydney 105
Penny Taylor, Adelaide 106-109
Section Three 111
Appendix 1. A sample page of an index to the Mission Managers’ Diary.
Appendix 2. A sample interviewee release form.
Appendix 3. Some relevant extracts from the writings of Ernest Gribble, Gribble’s son who grew up at Warangesda.
Appendix 4. Another interview with Mrs Isobel Edwards.
Section Two Oral Histories
Descendants
Jenny Goolagong
Three Ways, Griffith, 1993
I think that Warangesda should be preserved because Dad has no knowledge of it and I’m 30 years old and I didn’t know anything about it until I got involved with ASSPA and Pat started telling us about it. Most of the other ladies didn’t know nothing about it either until then, so this generation my age and older, they don’t know it so it’s sad because it’s still a part of Aboriginal history and we need to start learning it again. I think it’s sad, the Wiradjuri tribe was one of the biggest in NSW and it’s one that had so much damage done to them and lost their identity so much. We need to keep what history we have left.
They say that Aboriginal people in NSW and Victoria aren’t Aboriginal but you only have to turn and talk to any Aboriginal person and you’ll find that they’ve got that deep spiritual feeling that just makes them Aboriginal, something that can’t be denied.
In the Bicentennial year, the Pastor of our Church, George Mann, realised there was some strange things going on around Narrandera on the farms in the area near the Poisoned Waterholes Creek. The cockies were having problems and they couldn’t understand what the problems was, beds shaking and all that. They had no knowledge, they just thought it was weird, and in one incident, the bed was rising and they knew something was wrong with their son, so they rushed him into the hospital and the doctors said there was nothing wrong with him physically. Now the family knew someone who knew George the pastor, so he went out there, and him being a Kanaka, he had no knowledge about Aboriginal history either or anything to do with the culture. And he was invited into the home to see what he could do to help and this fullblood walked right up to George, a spirit, and he asked George what he was doing in the house and George just looked at him and walked outside. And as he walked outside, he saw a vision of what was there all those years ago before the farmers moved into the area, and he saw a waterhole there that was poisoned and he saw it all and described it and the farmer confirmed that was the way the country was all those years ago. And George realised that the man he saw could have been one of the original tribe that lived there on their walkabouts and who else would give him that revelation but something spiritual.
Stanley White
Darlington Point, July 1993
I’m 89 years old and I came here as a small kid to be raised by my Uncle Bradbury. I’m a white man but I knew lots of the dark people, used to go out with one of the Bloomfield girls but she was pinched off me. I remember Bert Hamilton and Jimmy Murray and Hughie Foote, he was a little fat fellow, a really good swimmer and diver. The police used to get him to look for the bodies if there’d been a drowning. I knew Dick (Beau) Edwards and Boona Gowans. He went off to the First World War but they sent him home when he got trenchfoot.
We all mixed together but in those days Uncle Bradbury, he’d get locked up if he gave the dark people a beer, it wasn’t allowed.
The old Mission at Warangesda was there when I was a kid. We used to go up there for cricket, the town against the Mission. I don’t remember much about the place. They lived in these little two room houses. They’d come into town pretty often and have a drink and there’d be a bit of fighting and carrying on. You could get a bottle of wine for two bob then, but if the police caught you buying one for the dark people they’d lock you up.
Hector Beaumont, he was a teamster used to come through, and he built a mud hut that he used to live in over that way.
When the Mission closed people moved down to the Sandhills and the river bend. They built new tin huts on the Sandhills. Len Turner built himself a hut on the creek. His son was Doug Turner. Len would put on a bit of a corroboree sometimes.
I remember being told that years ago the dark people had corroborees over at the sandhills near the Poisoned Waterholes and people would come there from Hay, Wagga, all over.
A reminder of Australia’s black history on the Hay-Narrandera road.
Dot Ingram
Leeton, July 1993
Both my grandparents are from Warangesda. My mother was a Gibson and my grandmother was a Kennedy. Mother was only young when the Mission moved from Warangesda over to the Point and the stories she told me about it were happy ones.
When I go out to Warangesda, I like it just how it is now ‘cos I can feel what it would have been like, not exactly how it was, but the feeling is there of people being on that place. There’s a peacefulness there, a feeling that you’re in touch with the old people. I’d be worried if it was done up too much, became too commercial. If they just reinforce what’s there, that’s fine, but once you start making rebuilding a model Warangesda, you’ll lose the reality of it. But, of course, that’s all right for me because I can picture it, I suppose the younger generation isn’t able to do that.
From the stories my mother told me, as soon as her mother died, and she was quite young at the time, her and her brothers and sisters were sent to Cootamundra Home. She never really knew her father ‘cos he wasn’t allowed to rear his own kids in those days. Mother’d have been eight or nine at the time.
She came out of Coota and then she went to work for Dr Lethbridge and she got married not long after that. Then my father went away to War in 1939 when I was born and Mum left the Point and went to Sydney for about six years till the end of the War. Then Dad came back and he took us all and we went bush, round Condobolin, Forbes and in later years back to Griffith. He did rabbiting on stations, sheepwork too, but he didn’t like staying round the towns because of the Welfare. Even though Dad was a white man, we still risked being taken and I’ve got a vague memory that we were taken away while he was off at the War and he had to come home to get us out. So we were sort of in limbo, we weren’t anywhere, we weren’t with the Aboriginals and we weren’t with the white people. We lost a home base through having to move.
In Condobolin, I remember going into the picture theatre through the side door and there was a type of fence rigged up between where we were sitting and the white people had to sit. I remember Mother standing on the footpath to have a cup of tea because she wasn’t allowed in the cafe to drink it.
Nurse Ford, over at Condo, she was the midwife delivered all the Aboriginal babies when I was young. People were scared to go to hospital ‘cos a lot of them weren’t coming out of it.
I liked it when we visited Darlington Point. Every house was your home. If you went to one place and they were having breakfast, you’d have yours, and if you went to another and they were having dinner, you’d have your dinner with them. Every house was everyone’s, everyone looked out for everyone. I can remember following old Uncle Roy Kennedy around, and he might take us fishing or something, we’d follow him while he was spearing fish, and then if he caught one, he’d cook it down on the beach there and all the kids’d have a good feed.
When my father came back from the War, we were on Three Ways for a little while. We always lived in a tent, we had a couple of six foot by eight foot tents and a wagonette drawn by two horses. The kids would sleep in the waggonette if it was wet. If we stayed for a while on a station, Father might build a tin kitchen but otherwise we cooked outside. Father built a big tuckerbox, everything we needed was in there. If it was wet, I can remember Father standing with a coat over his head cooking on the fire. We’d eat lots of stews, but baked rabbits and damper was our main diet in those days. Sometimes we’d get meat off a station owner. Our vegetables were mainly onion and pumpkin, things that lasted. Rabbits were good to eat but they were an income too.
Father used to trap the rabbits and the chill truck would come round every couple of days and pick them up. Dad did a lot of rabbiting round Jerilderie, then we’d go round to Hay and over to Hillston.
My mother and father were great cricket fans and we only had a radio with batteries and we weren’t allowed to use the radio till the cricket came on at night to save the battery. The cricket and the news, that was all we listened to. Our lives followed the cricket. When the teams had their lunch, we had ours, and if Australia was playing in England, then we’d have the fire on all night and we’d make coffee. Coffee was only for those night games in England to drink round the fire while we listened to the radio. Alan Border’s our hero today, Dennis has made him an honorary Aboriginal! Mum’s father, Hughie Foote, was a great cricketer in the old days.
I didn’t have much schooling because we moved around so much. I went to school for about six months in Forbes, three months in Griffith and that was about it. There was a lot of racism in the schools, not so much with the teachers, the two I got were really nice men, but with the other kids.
I didn’t like the history lessons, they’d talk about Aboriginals and call them savages, and tell us about Sturt coming down the River and being attacked at certain points. I couldn’t read at fifteen, but I taught myself over the years.
My first job was a domestic in a private house in Leeton, then I started work in the Cannery, that’s where I met Dennis, and then I worked at the Agricultural High School till I was married. My father was working way out in the bush and because we were under age we had to get his consent to marry. Dennis only had a motorbike then and he had to go and find Dad and take him into Rankin Springs to sign the bit of paper. We had a big wedding with a lot of people. and Dennis in Leeton, July 1993.
The old people were much stricter in those days about getting married. There was no living together then. When we went out to get consent, I was pregnant but we still weren’t allowed to be together, Dennis had to sleep out in the open air. I think we had more respect for ourselves, the girls, in those days. There was none of this de facto business, that was living in sin. I’d rather be the way things were than the way things are today. Nowadays men just walk off and it’s all the Governments fault. They’ve made it so easy for people to have children and receive money for it, there’s no need for marriage.
I think race relations are a lot better now than in those days, though. It still exists but it’s better hidden than it was before, they don’t come right out and say it now like they did in the past.
Dennis Ingram
Leeton, July 1993
I’ve got mixed feelings about Warangesda, especially the people who lived there. See, my old man, he kept travelling around, he was a shearer, but he used to talk about the place. I think it did good in the way that they looked after the people there, gave them tucker and everything.
Gribble himself deserved a medal. There was a lot of people out there in NSW copping a lot of bullets, poison and whatever, and he got them together at Darlington Point, and the ones who went there survived, their grandchildren are still here today. They might well not have been here if he didn’t set it up, so I think he played a big part in our survival. He did his part and he deserves a medal for what he done, but the people who took his place, they didn’t carry it on.
My old man used to travel around. We’d all go from Deniliquin to Darlington Point, Narrandera, Cowra, Condobolin, Lake Cargelligo, back to Griffith, the Point, right round in one big circle. He was a shearer and in the winter time he’d shear sheep and in the summertime he’d pick fruit at Leeton or wherever so he was right.
Mum used to get our clothes from the St Vincent de Paul shops, get two sugar bags full of clothes, bring them home and we used to have a party trying them all on. There was no dole in those days and we were a big family, twelve of us. We had our own waggon and a sulky for going into town. I think our sulky would have cost us about £50, about four weeks’ wages. Dad traded a horse that was worth £50 for the buggy, there was a lot of bartering going on then. You’d get your tucker, rations, from the police stations as you travelled around, that was the dole in them days. They’d give you a bit of paper to go to the stores and get your food. The Mission people who stayed in the one place, they were fed and looked after, but the ones who moved around managed that way.
If we were camped down by the river, we’d get plenty of fish, you could catch big cod in those days. They’d build a little platform out over the water and fish from there and catch cod with a line. They’d cover them with mud and cook them in the ashes. We’d swim under the water spearing fish too but you had to be careful not to show the bottoms of your feet ‘cos they were white and looked like a fish under the water and you could get speared in the foot.
We’d catch ducks, we’d make a cage on the bank and when they went in there you’d pull a lever to catch them. Everyone had rabbit traps, you’d carry twenty or more around in the wagon. Rabbits, lobster, fish, mushrooms, you could always get a feed. Possums we’d get too. You’d climb up trees with a rope around you, right up big trees, and you’d put the wire up, twist it round and get them out. We’d get them, kill them, singe them, gut them, put bread and that in them to season them, sew them up with copper wire, put him in the ashes at the bottom of the hole - beautiful. I broke an arm once falling out of a tree. We’d get birds too, cockatoos, we’d lasso them out of the trees with bamboo rods and take them to the pub and sell them. They were good money.
It was a good life travelling. The night before we’d take the tents down, get the dogs and the chooks into the wire cage under the wagon, everything would be packed away in the old 3-ply T-chests, it would be like a walking house. Travel was slow, we’d move about walking pace, the roads were all old dirt roads, not graded, but the wheels were so big they could go through everything. The only thing was the wheels would wobble after a while and we used to fix them up by camping near the river and putting them in the river so they’d swell up, get tight again and keep the metal rim on tight. If a spoke broke they’d stop and fix it. They always had a tommyhawk, a wheelspanner and a pole to lift it up. The sulkies, the real flash ones, had rubber wheels and some of the buggies would be done up real flash, but the waggons were like those old-time cowboy ones with canvas over the top.
Most Aboriginals today, those over 50 years old, got scarred lungs from sleeping out in the cold. When you consider the size of the families though, they did really well, ‘cos we were out on our own. We had our medicines. We’d use castor oil and cod liver oil. They were great cod liver oil people, and sulphur, they were great believers in sulphur, you’d buy it in a powder. Rexona too. And old man weed, they’d boil it up and bathe the wounds in it. Sometimes we’d buy candles, or we used to get the fat off the sheep when they cook it up. The old man used to keep that in a tin, and we’d fill a tin up with sand, and on the top we’d leave about two inches and fill that up with fat. Then you cut a bit of bag off, stick it down the middle for your wick, light it and that was your candle. We had kerosene lanterns too but you couldn’t always get kerosene. And ironing, we’d iron with the old hot iron, throw it in the fire, put brown paper over the clothes and away you’d go. Mum used to boil up the washing in an old copper, cut a bit of soap up in it, rinse it and hang it up.
Our main needs were flour, sugar, tea, soap and candles. We’d have the old waggas. They’d cut up the old wool bales and sew the St Vincent de Paul clothes on to them with an old bag needle and then you’d have a beautiful big blanket. My parents had a fold up wood stretcher they’d stick into the ground and the kids slept on the ground, four of us in a tent.
An old fold up stretcher in the Pioneer Park Museum in Griffith.
An old sulky at Warangesda, photographed in 1980 by Tamsin Donaldson.
At first we had bag tents, then from there to a tent, then from there to a tin shack made out of kerosene tins and lined with bags. We used to get the cement bags, cut them open, put flour paste on them and stick them to the wall, beautiful. You’d take your tents and bags with you when you moved, but you’d leave your hut for coming back to.
We had woollen strides, they were lined inside in those days, but no underpants. We’d wear shirts, sandshoes and hats. Our canvas sandshoes, when they got too dirty, we’d just polish them black with boot polish. Mainly we were barefoot, our feet were real hard, we could walk on bindies without them sticking in, that’s how tough we were.
Dad settled in Narrandera for quite a while and then he said, ‘Well, I’ve got enough kids now, we’ll go to Leeton where all the picking is.’ We worked as beanpickers, peapickers, onion pickers, grapepickers. This was in the war years. They supplied the tucker overseas from the cannery. They picked it on the farms, took it into the cannery and sent it overseas, so that’s where we played our part in the war. It was good work for a whole family.
We lived down Boorie Lane to start with in bag huts. We’d put up two crossed poles and a ridge pole across the top and drop the bag hessian over it. Of course it wasn’t waterproof so we moved up to Wattle Hill ‘cos we wanted some tin on the top of us. There must have been a hundred families living there then, Aboriginal and white, ‘cos there was so much work picking. Everyone came up from Sydney and all over, they’d stop there for a summer, then move on. It was a sort of stopover place. It was the only place I know that was never declared a mission; it was a reserve, Wattle Hill.
They built a lot of red huts there years ago and the Water Commission people lived in them and when they left the Koories moved in. They were painted red top and sides, government tin. They weren’t too bad, one big room and if you wanted any privacy you dropped some bag down - it was a great thing the old bag. They had iron windows that you’d close down and lock. There was no fireplace in the red huts but we’d put them in our own tin shacks what we built ourselves. There used to be a tip there, from the cannery, so we’d get a couple of four-gallon drums from there, make the huts, and we’d make our own chimneys then. Gee they were some weird shapes too. You’d build tin inside and in the bottom, you’d put your bricks. We got the ideas from the white people. We’d make tin cups or use a tin can for a flower vase. They’d paint the tin up, or get scissors or tin cutters and make fancy patterns on them. They’d put their own designs on the tobacco tins and on the doors of the houses. They’d be emu, kangaroo, koala, all that sort of thing. Of course, they were all pushed into the tip in the end. They’d paint the buggies red, red and silver were the favourite colours, silver spokes and red round the rim and black seats.
On Wattle Hill, like most places, there was one spot where you would go to sit around, have a band, dance out on the open dirt. Old Uncle Titch used to play the accordion, Nonnie the guitars, Tom the gumleaves. We’d get punk off the trees and burn it for light. I got some off a tree the other day to show the kids. It’s like a white sponge grows on the sides of the trees. We’d play football with them after dark, kicking a flaming football.
On Sunday, the white people used to come out and get us all together and go down to an open space and we’d have Sunday School. Mrs Campbell used to come through and stop over in a shed and she’d give us those little cards, Sunday cards, I used to love them.
In those days, we used to look after the old people. If they were sick, they’d be sitting up there on the waggon all rugged up, giving them soup and everything to keep them going, they used to look after them. They never wanted to go to hospital so only when they got too close to the end, they’d force them up there, but up till then they looked after them.
The old people were always telling stories. They used to make you sit down and talk about who was related to who. This was the greatest thing for them, and I was related to every person in the world, I think, that’s why I wasn’t allowed to marry anyone! They were all first cousins or second cousins. Today people don’t know all that any more and I wish to Christ I’d listened more, but I used to get away from them and go and play football or marbles, I wouldn’t listen. They could tell you who was related to who right back to the 1900’s. Other than that, they’d tell you stories about hairymen, bogeymen, bunyips. Bunyips lived in the river, they’d come out and get you. You’d never find a brush or comb in our place with hair on it, ‘cos someone could use the hair to make you sick. ‘Mussing’ they used to call it, a bit like pointing the bone. They’d talk about bone-dusting too. They’d say ‘Don’t go down to that old bloke or he’ll bone-dust you, keep away from him, they’ll get a bone and they’ll scrape it, and they’ll put it in your tea or whatever and you’ll die.’
They had a closer relationship too with the animals and the land. If anyone died, you’d hear the plover fly over the house. And a willy wagtail flying around meant someone was coming to visit.
They were good times, but there’s good and bad at all times. One of the good things was that mum and dad had control over the kids in those days, not like now. They used to say, ‘Everyone’s born with brains, but no-one’s born with knowledge,’ and they used to give us the knowledge. People may not have been very educated those days, but their knowledge was important. My parents could read and write a bit, mostly people used to pick up their learning after school. I was lucky when I went to school ‘cos a lot of Koorie kids had gone through before me. Education’s really good today for those who want it. I’ve worked in the abattoirs for the last twenty years, but my son’s almost finished his doctor’s training at Newcastle University and my other children have got a good education. Health’s better now too, our lungs would be much better than in the old days.
Ossie Ingram
Narrandera, June 1993
I was born on the second of January 1922 at Cowra and then being so white we weren’t allowed to stop on the mission and we had to move away and we went to Brungle, between Gundagai and Tumut. Margaret Tucker was there then, she wrote all those books and went up to Tweed Heads, got a dirty big mansion up there.
My father and his mother and my grandfather all came from Warangesda, but they were kicked off because they were too white and the APB wanted to take them but my father kept going, kept going, kept going. The authorities wanted to take them and ‘make better people of them’. And those that got took, now they’re marrying their sisters ‘cos they don’t know.
We had a beautiful father, he went from town to town and took us all away in a waggonette. I remember when we come down that big mountain at Adaminaby and we’d put the poles in the wheels to stop them turning and they skidded all the way down the hill. At the bottom of that hill there’s a big Church and a beautiful little township.
Father used to work round the different stations, Ossie James Ingram was his name and his father was Jack Ingram, born down at Moonacullah, near Deniliquin. His father was born in Ipswich, Queensland, he was a South African. They rode shotgun to guard the mail all the way down, and when they got here and saw so many friendly blacks, they just jumped off. And that’s when he met great-great-grandmother. Old J J., he came from Ipswich and married into the Wiradjuri.
My mother was Lily Ritchie or Lily Caubourt. My grandfather never married, so she took the name of Ritchie. When she was sixteen years of age, she got a job at Boorathumbool and this old fella said, ‘How good are you on horses, Lil?’ And she said, ‘I love them.’ Anyway, he put her on a horse, a real buckjumper, and she rode him and he said, ‘You’re not bad, now I’ll put you amongst some good horses.’ So he put her in the trotting stables and she went to the trots and won 150 ribbons, a lot of blues and a lot of reds there too, and she went all over the Western District. There were three women doing it, all beautiful drivers, they all come off Euabalong. I went and seen her ribbons once in 1950, in a room with her name on the door, and the chap there said ‘You can take them if you want them.’ But I said, ‘No mate, she put ‘em there, you just leave ‘em there.’ I don’t know whether they’re still there or not because it’s been under the hammer twice since then. Her parents came off the homestead at Euabalong.
Ossie Ingram, Narrandera.
Lil Ritchie was Esmerelda Ritchie’s granddaughter. My father, he’s an Ingram. When you talk about who you belong to, you go to the father and the mother’s just pushed aside for a while. My family, most of them are small, but some of them are six footers, that comes from the Bamblett side.
Back in the thirties and forties, we used to come from miles around, from Deniliquin, Narrandera, Euabalong, Condobolin, Hillston and all over into Darlington Point for the festival each year, Easter holidays I think it was, about the time that Christ was killed. There’d be sports, four days of it, they had what they call a greasy pole and anybody that went up there, no matter if he went out on his booble or what, if he got out to the end he’d get a bottle of whisky and they’d share it amongst themselves.
When we went to the Point, we weren’t allowed to camp on the old Mission, but people used to talk about Warangesda, good Lord yes. We’d camp at the Sandhills, but we’d visit Warangesda quite regular. We’d go around, across the bridge, and put a day in there. King, who owned it, didn’t like you camping there and disturbing his sheep and cattle, but he didn’t mind you going in for a day. The Church, the school, the ration store, the butcher’s shop was all there, and the dormitory, you could smell the people who had lived in there. Everything was there bar the houses, and they knocked them down to stop the people going back.
I haven’t got many memories of Warangesda, didn’t have a lot to do with it, but I heard no bad stories about the place, not like Cootamundra and them other places where they used to belt them and that.
Once the people started to get white, they reckoned they weren’t Aboriginal and they took them away. They’d wait till they went down town and they’d grab them there.
I’d like to see the place restored, Good Lord yes. We were born twenty years before our time. If we’d done it twenty years before, we’d have got the whole lot. It was mouth to ear in the old days, when I was a little kid, but when the television came in, and the drinking, it all went. My daughter, Joy Ingram, she wants to see it restored, but not over-commercialised, with lots of coaches pulling up and hundreds of people. But I say, ‘Why not?’ If coaches would come in there, that’s revenue, but they’d have to keep in the circle, they couldn’t have everyone racing all over the countryside disturbing everything. I’d like to bring out the schoolchildren, the black ones and the white ones, and let them learn about the place.
Before I die, I would love to see Warangesda restored back to what it was when I knew it, the school, Church, dormitory, butcher’s shop, and two or three houses out the back. It makes me sad to hear that the old Church has gone.
Warangesda means the home of the people. I can still speak the language, I’m the only fella that can speak say 30% of it. Old Tommy Lyons can speak a bit, but a different dialect. Wirup warangari means no more money. The old people used to speak the language, but as soon as we got to listening, they’d hunt us away, I don’t know why, ‘cos we wanted to learn it but they wouldn’t teach us. They’d say, ‘You’re gubba, you bloody well speak gubba language.’
The Charleses, all their furniture was handmade, the tables, chairs, the bloomin’ stools, the benches, and out back they had four dishes of water and everybody had a wash each morning. Some people used to say the Aboriginal people were stinking, dirty and so on, but if they’d went and seen what they used to do they’d have changed their mind. All your washing things were outside, different bowls for different things, and the big old copper out the back.
A typical old copper from those days.
The best feed you ever had in your whole life was johnnycakes and possum, that’s my favourite wilayi. Kangaroo is taboo to us, the Ingrams, I don’t know why. My father brought a kangaroo home once and my mother went real crook on him and said, ‘Take it away, take it away,’ and he said, ‘Why Daught?’ and she said, ‘We don’t eat that, emu, porcupine, anything else.’ Porcupine is like sucking pig, but it’s got to be cooked proper. If anyone cooks it and they don’t take the ant gland out of it, it’ll make them sick. I was taught that by a beautiful old fella.
The Charleses, the Turners, all them people from Warangesda, I knew them all. As soon as you say you’re going down to Warangesda, everyone wants to go, you see all the lines of cars. Warangesda, that’s our home. We put in a land claim for Warangesda, but King, he wouldn’t have a bar of it. ‘Get off this property,’ he said. ‘I’m an Aboriginal,’ I said, ‘and I own this property right from the old Punt down to the roadhouse. Kevin Williams did the land claim, he had this theodolite and measured it all out.
Mabo will never do any good to nobody ‘cos all the people now are buying their own houses so how is it going to help them? Some of those people, other side of Condobolin, maybe it’ll help them, but it won’t help anybody here, this side of the Lachlan down to the Victorian border ‘cos they’ve got their own properties.
There’s a lot of bloomin’ history here in Narrandera, but you’ve got to get the elder people like Tommy Lyons to talk to you ‘cos the young people know nothing. The Christians, they grew up there, but I don’t know if they know much.
The old burial ground was way down on the Sandhills. Dennis, my son, he was one of the people who recorded all the graves, the burial grounds. I could take you out here and show you one of the biggest bloomin’ burial grounds that you ever seen in your life, it’s an old sandhill, bigger than Koonadan. The cockie ploughed it up, you see, and all their bones come up, and I went up to him and I said, ‘I’d like you to come out here and have a look and I’ll show you something.’ Dennis was there, and Roley Williams, and I said, ‘See all that hill, that’s a great big burial ground.’ And they started walking over it and picking up bones. And the farmer said, ‘What are these, sheep bones or what?’ And I said, ‘No, they’re human beings.’ And he felt bad about it and he said ‘What do you want me to do about it, fence it off?’ And I said ‘No, no.’ And he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll sow it down with lucerne.’ I said ‘That’s a good idea.’ And he said, ‘I thought you were going to take my land off me.’ I said, ‘No way. We just want to protect our property, we don’t want to take your land, mate, you’ve been here for so many years, you work your land, but if you’re going to sow it down with lucerne, I don’t think it will grow.’ They’d never tell you about it, the old people, why you weren’t allowed to go on some places. White people won’t go into a graveyard, it’s the same difference.
So I said to the cockie, ‘See all those pines, they’re all marked.’ And he said, ‘Yes, they’re all canoes.’ And I said, ‘No way, they’re coffins!’ And I told him that the old people would heat the bark up and close them over on the bodies. They were understanding men and women, the old people, although the women did all the burying, dug the hole, everything and put stones on the top. They only marked the tree if he or she was someone great, a king or whatever, they’d mark them then. There’s marked trees at Warangesda where the old burials were.
Doreen Christian
Griffith, July 1993
I know Warangesda Mission is out there at the Point somewhere but I don’t know where it is and the old people never talked about it. I learned about it from Pat (Undy) when she started telling us about it. I was born at Balranald in 1942 and grew up on the Mission there. My father Bert Murray (known as Dimpy) married Beatrice Kirby, (known as Dollo), one of Charlie and Christine Kirby’s daughters.
I didn’t know that she was born on Warangesda Mission when her parents were living there. Another of their daughters, Theresa, married Ted Edwards from Balranald. (See next page.) I’ve got a lovely picture of my Kirby grandparents when they were young here on the living room wall.
I left Balranald when I was sixteen and moved to Robinvale following the grapes. We’d travel around with two horses and a waggon following the fruit to Swan Hill, Coomealla, all over. Then I married a Christian, another old family who lived on Warangesda, so I think it’s a good idea to preserve the history of the place. I don’t know any of it and if it is preserved maybe we can stop our history dying out and teach it to the younger ones.
Theresa Edwards
Balranald
This is a photocopy of another old photograph collected by the Balranald Local Aboriginal Land Council. They have been making copy negatives of them so that it is fairly easy to make further copies in the future for family and friends. In it they have identified Aunty Theresa Edwards and Noel and Henry Edwards but they are not sure of the names of the other children or the date it was taken. Old photographs are treasures and we came across many on the walls or mantlepieces of people’s houses. We strongly recommend that an organisation in the Warangesda region tries to borrow as many of these as possible to have copies made so that they are safeguarded for the future. It is important to document the names of the people in the photos while the older generation is still with us.
Theresa Edwards with children.
Tommy Lyons
Narrandera, July 1993
I was born in 1911 or 1912. See, in those days you’d travel around in a sulky or a broken down old wagon, and you wouldn’t go into town to be born; the old people had their own way of doing it. My father was Thomas Lyons, like me, but they called him Tiger. He came from Peak Hill, Wiradjuri country, over Dubbo way, and old grandmother Lyons, she was a Riley from up that way. I stayed with my mother after they split up and when she died I came looking for my father over this way; I was nineteen or so at the time so I didn’t grow up round here.
Dad came down here and married into the Bambletts so that’s how we come to stop here. Mary Lyons she became, and Billy and Neville are my stepbrothers. I went to old Warangesda Mission once after the Koories had left it, I was inquisitive and I went down with Bill to see where he was born and there was this nasty old manager there, he had the darn place, and he had the girls scrubbing the floor, telling them what to do. I’ll tell you what, that bloke, that manager, a couple of the girls that had been sent away, they spent their time, and when they were allowed to come back home, they were women then, that bloke he pulled them up. He was on a pushbike with just a dirty old pair of shorts on, and he asked them what they were doing. And they said ‘Oh, we’ve just come back to pay a visit to our old home where we lived when we were young, before we were taken away’. And he said ‘I’m managing this place, I’ve turned it into breeding pigs, this place was no earthly good to your people, they couldn’t manage it’. And I thought to myself, by Gee, what a cow he must have been.
In the old days of the Mission, see, the men would go off working and the manager wouldn’t let them in to see the family if they were a bit under the weather, a bit drunk. Well I thought that was asking for trouble. And one bloke, he came from over the border there at Barmah, his name was Day. He used to come over here in the early days when the Mission was going and he used to spend a week or a fortnight with them. So this poor old Day, he’d been on the grog I think, and he was thirsty and he saw the channel alongside the road, he knew it was there, he got through the fence, had a drink, and the next thing the coppers come along and they said to him, ‘What are you doing here?’ He said ‘I just had a drink of water cos it was pretty hot.’ And they said ‘You’re trespassing.’ ‘Oh well’, he said, ‘I’ve been here on and off for ages.’ Well the next thing the police wagon came along and picked him up. When they let him out he jumped the Murrumbidgee River going back. Times were pretty tough in those days.
Tommy Lyons, Narrandera.
Dad was a soldier in the First World War, in Gallipoli. I was in the Second War, in New Guinea and the Middle East. Cecil Clayton, he was a mighty soldier, that bloke, he was at war with me. Old Mrs Higgins (Rose Clayton) was his mother, that was before she married old Lewis Higgins. And I met up with my brother Bill in the Middle East, I claimed him and we ended up in the same unit.
Bill, my brother, was born at Warangesda Mission. Well, he wasn’t born on the Mission, but under a tree just outside the gate. You had to be full blood or half caste to go on the Mission and if you had light skin, you was a ring-in, they didn’t want them on the Mission. They reckoned Mary Bamblett (Lyons) was white. You see, they throw back, even though they reckon they don’t, but you’ll get some real light skinned ones and some’ll be real dark in the same family. Well, what does that come from, nature or God’s will?
I remember the Kirby’s used to be on the old bottom hill. The old fella was a great old carver of emu eggs. It’s nice to hear that the family is still doing it today.
I’m only 83 years old. My father lived to be 98 and my Aunty Kitty lived to be 103 so I’m pretty young for our family!
Neville Lyons Narrandera, July 1993
I was born in 1927 in Yanco. In those days, when a dark woman was having a baby, they wouldn’t let them into hospital, and Aunty Liza Morgan, she was the midwife round here. They’d travel around in sulkies and they wouldn’t go to town for twelve months and it might be that long before they registered you. My birthday’s in July every year, but when I got my birth certificate it said June. A lot of people’s birth certificates got confused because of the moving around like that. One day when I was asking Mum she said ‘That’s where you were born, down under a pine tree.’ And with this Mabo thing, I’d like to know how you’d go about claiming a spot, where you were born or where you lived.
Old Archie Bamblett was my grandfather on my mother’s side and his wife was Sophie Wedge, my grandmother. Her mother was a Nicholls I’m sure, she was real Scots. My mother was Mary Bamblett and my father was Tiger Lyons. My mother and father, they wouldn’t let them on the Mission, they said they were too fair skinned. So we travelled around a lot with Dad doing droving, fencing, fishing, stockwork, wool pressing. He run the shed at Burrawang over near Crundle District.
Bill was the first, my elder brother about ten years older than me, and when he was born, they wouldn’t let her in on the Mission to have her baby and she had it at the gate, they reckoned she was white. Some of the Bambletts were white, my grandfather’s people were white, they were Bambletts. Cecil Clayton and that lot, they were pretty dark, they came from over Mildura, South Australia way.
They moved all the people from the Mission at Warangesda over to the other side. They used to have dances there at the old Sandhills Mission. That’s when I was working on Kooba. I used to come in for them and if any dark bloke was across that bridge after a certain time, the police would give them a kick up the backside and hunt them home.
We’d have dances out here on the Narrandera Sandhills too, down on the claypan. The Baxters and the Ingrams would all be there, people would play the accordion and the gum leaves. Father would have a few beers and play all night and everyone would dance until the claypan turned to dust between your toes. We’d get punk, or blackfella’s bread some people called it, a sort of white moss off the side of the trees, soak it in kerosene and burn it for our light. You’d carry it around in a gunny bag, take a bit of steel, whack it to make a spark and it would smoulder then burst alight.
I reckon it’s a great idea to restore Warangesda, but who’s going to control it? Surely there’s someone who will take on the running of it, you wouldn’t put a white person in there. There’s too many white people running things already. They get the whitefella to come round and get all the information off you, like that Peter Read making money out of his books. It’d be a good idea to have a representative from each town in the area, Narrandera, Griffith, Leeton, the Point, Wagga, and they could form a committee to run Warangesda. Then if there were jobs created at the old Mission, you could employ some people from each town.
Illustration of layout of Warangesda
Carol Higgins Narrandera, July 1993
I have strong links with Warangesda. My grandmother, Mary Bamblett was descended from one of the original Aboriginal families to live on Warangesda in Gribble’s day. She married my grandfather, Tommy (Tiger) Lyons, a Wiradjuri man from the Dubbo area, and my father, Billy Lyons, was born on the outskirts of Warangesda Mission on 9 September 1919. My grandmother had gone to the Mission when her baby was due and had been refused entry because she was too light-skinned. So my father’s birthplace is the old dead tree near the gate to the Mission. My husband’s family come from Warangesda too. Noel’s parents were Lewis and Rose Higgins.
When the Mission closed, Dad’s family moved first to the Sandhills at Darlington Point and then to the Bottom Sandhill here at Narrandera. He was a great runner when he was a young man and used to train every day. In 1937 he won the Darlington Point Gift and was presented with the sash at the Sports Carnival that attracted runners from all over. Everyone would go over to the Point in their horses and sulkies to take part or watch, it was a great annual festival.
He fought in the Second World War in the Middle East. He was one of the rats of Tobruk and fought at El Alamein. He married my mother, Mrs Lillian Lyons in Sydney and they lived in Sydney for several years and Dad worked with Quickfreeze there. After they returned to Narrandera, he worked for the Water Commission and the Council and raised ten children.
I work at the Narrandera High School and Aboriginal history is becoming increasingly important in the schools. That’s why I’d like to see Warangesda Mission preserved as an important part of our history to show the younger generation. We shouldn’t forget other important parts of our history such as Murdering Island up the Wagga Road towards Sandego. That’s the spot where one of the last massacres of Aboriginal people in our area took place.
Jim Ingram, Senior
Leeton, July 1993
Warangesda is one of the most important symbols for Wiradjuri people. What I’m going to say may sound as if I’m contradicting myself, but I see Warangesda in two ways. On the one hand, it’s important because if Gribble hadn’t come and set it up, the Wiradjuri might not have survived. We’d been making war against the British for nearly a hundred years, but by the time Gribble arrived on the Murrumbidgee, things were pretty bad, the Aboriginal people had been driven off their land by the selectors, poisoned, and hunted away. In that era, an Aboriginal scalp was worth less than a dingo’s. So in that sense, Warangesda was a safe home, a heartland for the people, and Wiradjuri came there from all over. While Gribble was there, it was the place to be, he was the best thing that ever happened. But Warangesda also became a concentration camp for our people and we can’t forget this. It didn’t set out to be that but later there were atrocities like the removal of the children and so on. So for me, the importance of Warangesda is to remind people of the good and the bad in our past, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
My great-grandma on my father’s side was Mary Cameron, a nurse who came to Warangesda with Gribble and she was married to John (Jack) Bamblett and lived at Warangesda. One of their daughters, Elizabeth, married grandfather John Ingram from Moonacullah and they raised their family at Warangesda for a lot of the time. (She was married to John Williams before and had another family including Archie and Knocker.) My father James Isaac topped the class at Warangesda and one of his sisters was buried there. My father was the oldest of the family; the others were Locky, Titch, Irene, Dorothy and John. On my mother’s side we’re descended from Billy Baruga who was called the king of the Euabalong area. He travelled from the Lachlan to the Murray River where he saved a family of whites from drowning, dove in and saved them and they named a town after him. Billy Baruga had a daughter Elizabeth Lena Baruga and she had a daughter Lily Ritchie, who was sometimes known as McGuiness. Lily married my father and my brother Ossie became the first male descendant of Billy Baruga.
James Ingram (top), Nicole and Simon Ingram, Debbie Wallace and Monique Dupond, at the Leeton LALC office.
I’d like to see Warangesda got back and restored as a reminder of the past. It’s our roots, where you come from. This Mabo decision is crucial to Warangesda. At the first opportunity we must show our constant association with Warangesda. Mabo brought something to a head because there is nothing in the constitution covering us. We need recognition as a sovereign people, then things can happen. But there’s been too much hysteria about it and a lot of that is because of the blacks who advise the Government. We don’t want to drive the whites off their land. There’s too much talk about hatred of whites among some of our people. I listen to John Edmund’s great-great-grandchildren saying white people are no good when they’re all descended from an Irish lady, Mary Cameron, and she was a nurse who married an Aboriginal man. Aboriginal people are Australians and there’s room enough for all of us to live and work together. Take the CDEP here. The wider community felt threatened at first when we got started, but now you’ve got whites and Italians coming to the group for work and that’s the way it’s got to go.
In the old days, there were plenty of white people lived in the blacks camps, lived their whole lives with them, were accepted into the tribe and married into them. Take Gribble too, he gathered all the people up, he had the trust of the people, he was accepted into the people. Then the other white people with the authoritarian stamp came along and ruined it all. We’ve got to have a sense of loyalty to the white people who throw their lot in with us and I refuse to hear anything said against them. With the Wattle Hill Aboriginal Advancement Corporation here at Leeton, the whites who were on Wattle Hill are included too so that the community is bonded together.
I often think about the opening words of Alex Hailey’s book ‘Roots’, when he says that all black men are not good and all white men are not bad. There are good people and bad in all races, and there have been plenty of Aboriginal people who’ve betrayed their own people. What about the native police? And Bora Brian, a Wiradjuri hero who held a full British regiment for twelve months and fought a big battle at Coolamon Station. Well he was killed by his own people, someone sold him out. We’ve got our heroes, like Windradyne, another Wiradjuri warrior that Mary and Isobel Coe did a book on.
Although the Aboriginal people fought the British for years, one of the big problems was our own culture. See, in those days, everyone was equal so there was no leadership to resist the invaders. If you got a kangaroo, you shared it. No one had total authority. And some of the tribes were at war with one another, we were fighting the Narrungga tribe, and some like the Wongaibon were fighting amongst themselves, so it made it hard to resist and they got moved to Condobolin. People from all the tribes in this region ended up at Warangesda. The Narrungga, they went right over to Shepparton, the river wasn’t a boundary in those days, and there was lots of intermarriage. The Yorta Yorta, they were a sub-tribe of the Wiradjuri. And the Ngiyampaa, it’s not clear to me if they were different from the Wiradjuri or not. We’ve got a word, nyapa, which means someone dear to you, so maybe the Ngiyampaa was a clan that was dear to the Wiradjuri. Anyway, the Narrungga were on the Murrumbidgee, the Wongaibon on the Lachlan, then you had the Baakindji further west and the Kamilaroi was another big tribe further over although the Baakindji and the Kamilaroi were almost one people.
Out of all the big tribes, the Wiradjuri, the Kamilaroi and the Baakindji, the Wiradjuri were noted for their ability to perform death duties. The Kamilaroi used to point the bone; the Wiradjuri never did that because they were the kidney fatters. Wiradjuri always buried people with their head facing towards the setting sun. They always made the coffin out of pine bark and bound it with kangaroo sinews. Generally, they buried one person in a sitting up position over to one side looking towards the main grave site. If you took a direct line from him, you’d see that he was keeping an eye on the others. Then they had lots of carved trees round the burials, there’s one this side of Warangesda. Lindsay Black, he’s done a book on the carved trees, the different designs.
Warangesda can never be owned by any one individual person or group. To be owned by one is a contradiction of Aboriginality. There should be a management team of the whole Wiradjuri nation. Of course that’s easier said than done, things have changed a lot and the gap is widening between Aboriginal people. When I was a boy, we travelled around and we would go to every camp on the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Lachlan and be welcomed everywhere. We’d go to Euabalong and if you arrived on a Friday, there’d be dances, singsongs or gambling, there’d be Church on Sundays, work on Mondays and it was the same all over. When we were sick of being pushed off everywhere, at Narrandera we bought our own blocks on the Sandhills. We built houses, formed streets. When we needed a Church, we built it ourselves and as we had no money to buy good materials, old Uncle Knocker Williams, he said ‘We’ll run concerts to raise the money’. So everyone did something and they built that Church. Then religion came in and put its authoritarian stamp on it.
Now things have changed and money plays an important part in the Aboriginal attitude. Fear and greed ruin everything. Before the Land Rights legislation everyone wanted land; now they all want money. The younger generation says ‘Gone are the days when Aboriginal people do something for nought’. But in the old days, if we wanted something we all pulled together and did it, we didn’t sit around waiting for the money. Money is destroying us, but we can’t go back, we’ve got to learn how to use this money without it splitting us apart. But it’s not easy. I work with the Land Council, the WHAAC and the CDEP and I get it from all sides. If I try to find outside money, we have to put in applications, prioritise what we want, be accountable to ATSIC. And at the same time we’re accountable to the Aboriginal community and we have to try to find out what they want. But a lot of them won’t come to the meetings. If they all came to the meetings they could have their say. But every Aboriginal in the country allows this to happen. Aboriginals won’t vote and it’s a big problem.
The big government departments, it’s like the Protection Board all over again half the time. They’re meant to be there to help and support and fund things, but they make it so hard, change the rules all the time, have you spending all your time filling in forms and writing submissions instead of doing what you’re good at. They want you to go away to train you to find out what’s best for your community and that’s the one thing I don’t need training in. It’s just a way of controlling everything; they say it’s self determination, but they’re so clever at keeping control of everything, just like the Board. And then the community blames you because everything happens so slowly or not at all. The money that comes in sounds like a lot, but people don’t realise what it costs to do up the flats or lay on the water or build security fences. There’s housing, health, education, and so many other priorities to decide between.
We run the risk of losing our true identity and I’d like to see Warangesda as a way of rising above the factions, all pulling together like we did in the old days. I’d like to see it restored to its original splendour as a reminder of what went on, both the good things and the bad, the good days of Gribble as well as removing all the children, people dying and so on. If they restore the school, they should take off that extension as that’s not part of the history of Warangesda as we knew it. I’d like to see one of the old cottages restored too as a monument to the way the old people there lived. I’d like to see the original graveyard found and made into a proper cemetery. Some people reckon a lot of our people were buried over the other side of the peppercorn trees, on the left as you go down that line of trees. And we should follow up on all the people that came off the place. A lot of great people went through Warangesda and that tells us something about the place as well as the Aboriginal people. Peter Read did a great job with his book, but we could do with more books on the place.
There’s lots of other important places in Wiradjuri history too and they need to be remembered as well. There’s the Poisoned Waterholes, Murdering Island and Graham’s Grave. Graham was one of the early boundary riders who would put out flour laced with strychnine for the Wiradjuri. A man and his wife with 5 or 6 kids came along. One boy went off chasing rabbits and when he returned the others were dead, poisoned by Graham. The boy ran to the old people who sent a group of warriors after Graham and speared him to death.
Ration shed 1993
Pat Undy
Darlington Point, October 1993
My name is Patty Undy, I live at Darlington Point and I’m married to Bill Undy. I’m a Wiradjuri woman, my mother was a Wiradjuri woman, and my father was a Yorta Yorta man. He came from Cummeragunja and my mother was born at Warangesda. I’ve taught my children to be proud of their Aboriginality and I’ve also taught them as much as I know about Aboriginal culture. I think it’s very important for them to learn about it. I’ve also spent many years teaching Aboriginal culture to both Koorie and non-Aboriginal children in the primary schools.
I was born at Griffith in 1946 to Bill and Ettie Charles. Mum was a Hamilton before she married into the Charles family and she was the one who often taught us kids about Aboriginal things, such as using Koorie words, making animal tracks in the dirt, our language group which is Wiradjuri. Mum always pronounced it as Waradhuri rather than how it’s pronounced and written now as Wiradjuri. She even told me that if anyone ever asks what ‘meat’ we are then the answer is ‘fish’. She used to tell us stories years before they came out in book form, stories like ‘How the sun was made’ and ‘The emu and the brolga’. Mum told us things about our culture when other parents wouldn’t tell their kids anything.
I remember in the sixties when we would visit Aunty Belle at Yanko Station, she would always point towards the site of Warangesda Mission and say ‘That’s the old mission over there’. When we moved to the Point in 1982, she always wanted to go out and have a look at the old place. We finally did get out there with Isabelle Edwards, another great old lady who was a school friend of Mum’s when they attended school at Warangesda. I think Isabelle’s and Mum’s good memories of Warangesda mainly concerned their people, Koorie people who they related to well.
They both said that a couple of the managers from the mission were mongrels. They took me for a tour around the site of the mission and said the Murrays (Isabelle Edwards’ family) and Bambletts lived next door to each other and that there were two streets. One street had a full row of houses on one side and houses half the length on the opposite side. There was also a butcher’s shop which was unlucky enough to be called a meat house but they soon put me right. By walking around the place with those two old ladies I got the impression that they loved it because it was their birthplace and it was such a part of them. I know that they would both have liked the idea that restoration work is being done on the old buildings that remain there today.
I’ve become really interested in Warangesda, the old mission site, because to me it’s part of my history, a part of my mother.
Patty Undy and Carol Higgins near the Narrandera Sandhills.
I would like to see the site restored completely and perhaps in the huts where Turners, Claytons, Bambletts and all the other families lived, perhaps a piece of history can be placed on the walls with the family tree concerning that particular family. I see it as a starting point for our people who are searching for their roots.
Most important of all, I see it as my mother’s birthplace and if it’s lost, how can I tell my grandchildren where their great-grandmother was born? I’d also like to see Cummeragunja and Coranderrk cos that’s where my grandfather came from and my father also came from Cummeragunja. He was a great athlete who ran in the Stawell Gift as a young man. There were eleven children in our family. There was Clancy, Aggie, Hazel, Norma, Billboy, Jimmy, Kay, myself, then Johnny, Carol and Colin. We lost Hazel a few years ago with cancer and Clancy passed away a few years before that so there’s not so many of us now. We’ve always been a close, close family, a happy family. We’ve always helped each other.
When I was a child, we never had much money but Dad always looked after us, made sure we had a feed on the table, made sure that we were kept warm in the winter. We moved to Hillston when I was a small girl and I remember travelling in the old horse and waggon and camping on the riverbank. We had one of those old waggons with the canopy thing over the top like an old cowboy and Indian one and we lived at Hillston for about 20 years. I remember the old tin huts we used to live in and Hazel, my sister, and Mum would knock down the old tin huts when they got fed up with them and build them up another way. They were knocked down and rebuilt that many times in a different style to suit the family that the tin was full of nail holes. We’d love to lie in bed in the mornings and when the sun came streaking in the mornings through those holes, we’d hold our hands up to the sunlight so that we could see the red parts on our hand.
They were pretty self-sufficient people, we didn’t rely on anybody. Mum and Hazel were often by themselves as Dad was a shearer and my elder brothers Jimmy and Billboy were shearers and they’d all be away a lot and we wouldn’t see them for weeks so Mum and Hazel would have to look after everyone and do things like fetch all the water and scrounge around for food. I remember when I was small we wouldn’t have any water so we’d take all our washing down to the river and hang the clothes over the bushes to dry. So many little things like that I remember about it, and even though we were poor and didn’t have much money, I wouldn’t swap any of those days for all the money in the world.
I remember one night when the Briggses and Pettits came down, we had nothing to eat, we only had a few potatoes and it was late, well we thought it was late but it was probably only about nine o’clock. Well, Mum gave them half of everything we had which was half a packet of flour and about four or five potatoes and we trusted, I think, in God to look after us. I think a lot of young people today take everything for granted and they expect things to be given to them. Also, Mum and Dad, if they didn’t have anything they’d go out looking for ducks’ eggs, or go fishing to catch fish for food. You’d always have damper, johnnycakes, scones, things like that. Mum used to make beautiful stews in the old camp ovens, we’d often cook them outside on a big open fire. I’ve never forgotten that time; they used to try to teach us to track things, we never learned how to do it much but they tried.
While we were there I married Billy and we lived on Hunthawang Station and I felt really close to Hunthawang, as if it was a part of me, but then we left there after a couple of years and moved to Griffith. Mum, Dad and everyone else moved back and that’s where my youngest girl, Paula, was born. Michael, our first-born, was born in Griffith and Colleen and Leanne, the two middle ones were born in Hillston.
Too often when people are doing history, they ignore the spiritual side, yet to Aboriginal people that’s the most important part of them. I mean, you look at the spiritual feeling they have for the land, and often white people can’t understand that and why Aboriginal people are always saying it’s our land cos it’s our spirit. When you think of how we consider the earth as our mother, and a mother is the one thing that cares for you and loves you, and that’s how Aboriginal people looked on the earth.
The spiritual side of them, it doesn’t matter if you talk to a Koorie person here in Griffith or in Sydney, or if they’re white as snow on the outside, inside they’d still have that spiritual feeling and they’d always have something to tell you that connects them with the spiritual world whether it’s a ghost story or something they’d seen, and it’s usually our old people reaching out to the young ones. I know when I did my University training in Sydney in 1976, I heard the old people singing and clapping their sticks at two or three o’clock at night when I was staying in the hostel. I asked the other girls if they’d heard it and one or two of them did but I heard it really loud and covered my head up. Aboriginal people have a lot of experiences like that, things that warn them or protect them in difficult times.
Our spirituality is one of the reasons so many Aboriginal people have strong Christian beliefs too. They aren’t different from Aboriginal spirituality but overlap with them. When you look at Aboriginal culture and our stories, they did have a God, and their God had a son. I remember my poor old mother once getting really upset because someone said she wasn’t a Christian but I said to her she shouldn’t worry. I said, ‘You always shared everything you had, you always took care of people and did the right thing by them and brought your children up not to steal, nobody can say that you aren’t a Christian’.
White people tried to destroy the Aboriginal people by taking away their language first of all because if you want to wipe out a people you take away the language and make them speak your language. That’s what a lot of the missionaries did, even though they thought they were being helpful to the Aboriginal people, they were trying to take away their heart and their soul. And when you look at the land, when you look at the language, they’ve taken both of those away and my mother said they were made to feel ashamed to speak in the lingo so the old people wouldn’t pass it along to the younger ones and that’s how we ended up losing everything.
That’s why I want to see Warangesda restored and why I support native title even though the way the government is doing it all it’s just another way of stirring up white people against the Aboriginal people. It’s giving recognition to our greatgreat-grandparents. Before that they were just classed as part of the countryside, either animal or plant, they weren’t recognised as people so we’ve got to show that our ancestors owned this land, were the caretakers of it. They might not have had fences and that, but we had our own boundaries. I remember when I was a small girl in Hillston, in Wiradjuri country, we went looking for rabbits over Ivanhoe way and we went so far and my mother said to Dad, ‘Bill, we can’t go any further, that’s Wongaibon land up there’. And he said, ‘Don’t be so silly Ettie, nobody takes any notice of that any more’. But she was 73 when she died in 1984 and she still thought that way.
So when I go out to Warangesda, I like to think about all these things and share them with my family and all the other Koories who like to visit there. It’s really peaceful, relaxing, you can feel all the old people around you. They loved that place, it was their home, they didn’t want to leave in the 1920s but the government destroyed the place over people’s heads just to drive them out. But their spirits are still there and all the memories and that’s why it means so much to me and why it is so important to pass it all on to the younger generation.
Paula and Patrick Undy, two of Patty and Bill’s children.
Leanne Undy
Darlington Point, July 1993
I want to be able to take my kids back to Warangesda, to show them where their great-great-grandmother lived. My mother has taken us out there and it is a wonderful place to sit quietly and think things through and feel close to the heart of your people.
I’d like to see the buildings restored and to see Koorie labour used on the rebuilding to make them feel that it’s part of them out there. The younger generation could rebuild the Mission, get it up to what it was in the old days. CDEP labour could be used to start with to get the youngsters interested and motivated. There’s a crying need to create jobs for young Aboriginal people and they could be used in any reconstruction as well as in long-term use of the place.
In the long run, there’s lots of things the Mission could be used for but it’s a question of balance. I wouldn’t want to see it become too commercial, if too many people were going in and out, it’d take that peaceful feeling away. If the whole Mission was rebuilt, you could employ a couple of young boys on maintenance, you’d need to have someone to show people around, and you could have a shop for selling artefacts as well as pamphlets and books on the history of Warangesda and the local area. There’d have to be signs on the main road to attract people in to the place.
The Mission could also be used as a meeting place for Koorie people and a resource centre. I’d like to see all the information that exists on the Mission kept there to encourage Koorie research. There could be a computer database in the resource centre, linked in to places like the Institute Library in Canberra. (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies)
It would be good to have a big conference centre and cabins for groups and school children but I wouldn’t like to see them built on the Mission site. Perhaps they could be built on land somewhere else, not on Warangesda itself. In that way, there would be accommodation for visitors nearby without destroying the peace of the place.
Leanne Undy, one of Pat Undy’s daughters.
Mary Briggs
Shepparton, September 1993
I was born on the 13th of March, 1915 at Moonacullah and we moved into Deniliquin shortly after that. My father was Alf Kelly and he was married twice. Sissy was Dad’s only daughter to his first wife and she died giving birth to her and Sissy (her real name was Rose) married old Dave Harris. They raised a big family and a lot of them live round Albury way. Dave Clark, he’s one of Dad’s greatgrandsons through Dad’s first marriage. Mother was Lala (Leila?) Kelly, she was a Taylor, and there’s eight children in our family, Alfie, Tom, me, Sarah, Mavis and Eva, Alice and Alma, a big family. Dad’s father was a whitefella from overseas somewhere and grandmother Kelly was from Hillston, from the Wiradjuri tribe.
All those old people are dying out now and leaving it too late to get any information. We should go soon and see Warangesda, not leave it too late. Time’s running out for me as well; you think you’re going to be here for ever but I’m 78 now and it’d be good to go back to the place while I can. When we were travelling to Hillston one time, we camped on the river at the Point and Dad said he used to live over there on Warangesda Mission, where the old dormitory is. He didn’t tell me much and I often wondered about the place. He said he was there for a while, at the dormitory, and he used to spend time with the Smiths, the Websters, the Edwards, he used to talk a lot about them.
They reckon dad was 106 when he died but I haven’t got any information on him except how we came to be related to the Harrises. He spoke the language real good, but they wouldn’t teach us, I wish I could have learned. You can carry it on and hand it on to the grandkids but they never passed the lingo on. That’s where they failed, I don’t know why, they just couldn’t be bothered. When they got together with any of their friends they’d talk it, they’d have a good old chat and a laugh but they’d never let the kids around. We wouldn’t know what they were talking about, maybe that’s why they wouldn’t teach us. They never liked the kids around in their conversation, not like today when the kids know everything, you can’t keep them away. I think it’s better for the kids to know, they grow up to understand more, things we try to learn in later years.
All over the years Dad worked hard. He was a drover, he could do any sort of work. He worked on Boonalli Station. We were there for 15 years and he used to boundary ride and the paddocks were big in those days. Later on Dad sort of settled at Hillston and of course Mavis married Harry Pettit from around there. They used to say that years ago the tribes used to meet up there, near the sale yard. At Hillston, when the flood was up, we’d go and get the wild food in our younger days. We went out getting ducks’ eggs on the island and we’d get ducks, fish and yabbies. They’d get the punk off the trees, they’d knock it off and you could cut it any shape you wanted, like foam. You could cut it into a ball and kick it around. I remember the old people used to use old man weed for a lot of things, we used to get it and boil it up for bathing sores and that. Darcy Pettit, he boils it up still and brings it to me here and tells me how to use it; there’s plenty around but no one will go and get it, he’s the only bushman around.
We used to make our own enjoyment in those days, we’d play rounders, cricket, we used to go riding and swimming. I used to love riding cos I was brought up on a station and that’s where we learned to ride and drive a little cart. That’s how you got around in those days. We had a nice sulky and horse, a special one and a favourite horse for coming into town. Dad always had a buggy and we used to like to follow the Balranald football team wherever they played, Kyalite, Stonycross or wherever.
We’d always have singsongs, dances out round the open fire, playing the accordion, guitar, gum leaves and that sort of thing. We always had our enjoyments, simple they were. And we’d go to dances too. Alma and I always used to go but we couldn’t get Alice to go. We’d make our own clothes. There was always someone who could make beautiful dresses, skirts and you’d buy the material and they’d cut it out but we had to sew it up, we were all good sewers.
As we grew up the family sort of split up for a while. Alf was that way and Tom was somewhere else. In later years I used to go to Balranald to spend a bit of time with Alf and his family but when you’ve got your family you don’t get much time. My Aunty, Mum’s sister, she married a Briggs and I married a Briggs too. They used to be on Cummeragunja and most of them started from Maloga, though some of them came from Tassie, but they didn’t have a lot to do with Warangesda. I only know that place from my father’s side.
Len (Bushy) Kirby
A photocopy of another of the old photographs borrowed and copied by the Balranald LALC. again, the photo is undated, but the car and style of clothing are good clues to the period.
Archie Bamblett
Sydney, September 1993
You don’t know nothing when you’re four years old and that’s going back 74 years and how are you going to find things out about that. I don’t know too much about Warangesda except mother and father used to live there and she used to push me around in a little stroller or whatever they called them then and apart from that I don’t know too much about it. Then we shifted to Narrandera Sandhills, at the bottom end, Hill 60, with my mother Sophie, my father, Archie and all my brothers and sisters. They all had big families in those days and they’re all passed on, I’m the only one left.
We used to go for picnics every New Year’s Day at Darlington Point. They used to have a racecourse down towards Warangesda then they shifted it over the river. They’d have horse races, footrunning. Old Billy Lyons used to run; I was in the high jump.
That’s about all I can tell you. We didn’t have wireless or TV, you had to sing along on your own, make your own instruments out of old tin cans, gum leaves. I don’t remember much about furniture but to tell you the honest truth, when I was 16 or 17 I didn’t know what it was like to sit on a chair, we always had a tin to sit on. Some people had chairs but we never did. You’d get a sheet of iron, put it up on poles, put wire netting round it and put your things on it and that’s about all I can tell you.
It was never any good in those days. My poor old mother would walk four or five miles to earn five or six dollars. We’d catch rabbits or fish. And that’s about all you’ll get from me. When I was 24, 54 years ago, I moved to Sydney, I love Sydney, went away on me own. The Aborigines were rough, very rough in the early days, you had a job to get anything done, but now it’s a different matter, you can go off where you like now, whenever you want, and you don’t have to pay for it.
Penny Taylor
Adelaide, August 1993
I’ve worked for many years with Aboriginal people recording and writing up Koorie history and as a non-Aboriginal person I don’t usually think it’s appropriate to include my own views and opinions.
So why am I including my own views here? Well, over the years, Warangesda has become special to me too. I first heard the word about fifteen years ago and loved the sound of the name even before I knew that it meant ‘the camp of mercy’. When I worked at the AIATSIS in Canberra, lots of Koorie visitors talked of connections to Warangesda and it was viewed as a very special place. Since then, reading about the old mission, and talking to all of you, it has become an important symbol for me too.
Warangesda is special to me because it represents a shared history between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, between Koories and Gubbahs. Warangesda would not have existed without the efforts of John Gribble, his wife and family, and a number of other dedicated individuals. Of course, they were all people of their time, but they fought passionately against injustice and for the rights and well-being of Aboriginal people. Ernest’s passages in Appendix Three give an idea of the warmth of his childhood memories of your ancestors and his fight for justice. It is easy from today’s viewpoint to pick holes in many of the things the early missionaries did and to criticise them for being patronising, cruel or misguided. But they gave it their very best shot, in the only way they knew how, and Gribble and his family suffered poverty, hardship, and the hatred of many whites for their commitment to Aboriginal people.
Penny Taylor, Lake Victoria, April 1994.
After years working with Koories documenting the black history of race relations, I grow as weary of feeling guilty about all the sins of the white world as I do being blamed for them. So it is reassuring for me to come across examples of non-Aboriginal people who stood up for Aboriginal people, they are people we can look back to across time with some pride.
Gribble is the kind of man I would have enjoyed meeting. We’d probably have had a few good arguments, but I doubt I would ever have questioned his integrity and his hard work. His diaries and writings show that he could be angry and frustrated, particularly with the system that he saw destroying Aboriginal people. Sometimes he turned his anger on Aboriginal people who he felt were letting him down and so giving ammunition to his enemies. But his love comes through strongly as does his loathing of injustice. Let’s look at just one entry from his diary to show what I mean.
April 7, 1885. Busy with butcher’s shop and Billy Foote’s new house - worked very hard, but when I see so much to be done for the comfort and improvement of my people, I cannot be idle. Two parties of our men are now busy with the enclosure of the remainder of our Reserve on the plain. Mr Rushton greatly annoyed me last night by omitting to supply poor Willie Gordon (one of the Aboriginal founders of Warangesda) with dry blankets last night and in not getting him washed at the proper time. I cannot brook neglect of plain duty to the suffering like poor Willie.
Obviously, terms like ‘my people’ would cause offence today, but his work, his dedication, his compassion for the old and dying, and his anger that they should be neglected comes through loud and clear from over a hundred years ago.
Some of the later white managers, particularly under the Board, were cruel and uncaring, but others still carried on Gribble’s aims. The Mission Managers’ Diary makes moving reading and we can look at the good deeds as well as the bad, we can see white people dying alongside Aboriginal people, sharing their whole lives with them. Let’s look at just a couple of pages from the early months of 1889.
The descriptions of the typhoid epidemic that swept through Warangesda early that year make tragic reading. Many of the men are sick and Mr Wales (manager since 1886) is spending his days and nights looking after them.
Nellie Kennedy was taken sick on 4 January. Miss Wales sits up with her at night as Mrs Wales is too sick and exhausted. Nellie died on Friday Jan 11 and was buried the same day. Billy Woods and Paddy McDonald also died that month. We’ll follow the diary for a few days.
JANUARY
Wed 30 Nellie’s baby taken sick.
Thurs 31 The baby is very bad with typhoid fever and bronchitis.
FEBRUARY
Fri 1 We think the baby is dying.
Mrs and Miss Wales are its constant nurses.
Sat 2 Baby no better. Colds are very prevalent on the mission.
Sun 3 Baby no better. Its sufferings are terrible.
Mon 4 No change for the better in the baby.
Tues 5 No change for the better in the baby.
Wed 6 The baby’s cough is easier and it is quieter.
Thurs 7 The baby never slept all the night through, but lay quiet watching everything going on. Has not slept all day.
It keeps yawning, seems so tired yet its eyes are so large and wide open. We do not think he can last much longer as he seems to be setting for death.
Miss Wales sat up with baby, he never closed his eyes but lay watching her.
He seemed conscious until 2 am but he got very restless, moving his head from side to side as though impatient to be gone.
Mrs Wales was called at half past two.
He died about twenty minutes to 3 am.
It was like falling to sleep for he seemed so tired.
He was buried at sundown and was carried by eight of the bigger girls. His grave is next to his mother’s.
Ada Wales taken sick with touch of fever.
We can all share in the heartbreak of this description as the baby everyone fought to keep alive finally passed away. By March, though, most of the fever cases were better, although both Mr and Mrs Wales are described as being very sick as well as worn out by nursing people day and night. We’ll take up the diary again on March 25.
Mon 25 Mr Wales in bed. Very bad with pleurisy and pneumonia.
Men cutting forks for dray shed. Grubbing.
Tues 26 Mr Wales no better, very bad indeed.
Began dray shed. Grubbing.
Wed 27 Mr Wales no better. Cutting forks for shed.
Thurs 28 Mr Wales no better.
Men all working at grubbing and dray shed and burning off.
Sat 30 Carting wood.
Sun 31 Mr Wales a little better night.
Mr Clarke went to railway station. School afternoon and service at night.
APRIL 1889
Mon 1 Mr Wales very bad indeed, sent for his daughter.
Tue 2 Mr Wales much worse … Mr Wales died at ten past five pm. His last prayer was for rain.
Wed 3 A terrific night. It thundered and rained the whole night. Had to bury Mr Wales body, buried it in mission cemetery.
It is easy reading the diaries to focus on the punishments for Aboriginal people who resisted the system, the hardships, the wrongs committed by whites. These things certainly need to be brought into the open. But as a non-Aboriginal person, I am relieved to see also the love and kindness that was there at Warangesda, a place where Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people lived and died and grieved and struggled on alongside one another.
That same sense of solidarity and community still lives on in Warangesda descendants, many of whom talk of sharing their lives with non-Aboriginal people in the towns and on the riverbank. There were always whites who were allies and friends, just as there were always others who were enemies.
Many people want Warangesda to become a piece of living history so that school children, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, can learn about the Koorie past. It’s important that young children learn about the Protection Board, and Donaldson, the removal of children, expulsions from the mission, the dog licences and so on. They need to learn shame. But at the same time, they can learn about the gardens, the children’s playground, and the little shops on the end of verandahs. They can be told of some of the dedicated white people who worked and died there, like Mr Carpenter, the first schoolmaster, and Mr Wales. Or they could find out about Mrs Gribble, who we read very little about but whose story ought to be told. Youngsters can only gain from having some white role models too.
So I see Warangesda as a symbol that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can work together and share a history, recognising the wrongs without forgetting the good intentions, so that we can learn together from that shared past. And maybe when I’m an old lady sitting on my front porch, a young Koorie teenager will feel confident and curious enough to interview me one day about my younger days, to find out what life was like in the bad old days before reconciliation. Until that day, Warangesda gives me enough optimism to write myself into your text.