Braided Channels of History Recording & Transcript - 67 (Raw)

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     INTERVIEW WITH ISABEL TARRAGO & SHIRLEY FINN
                       3 September 2000
               Timecode refers to tapes 67_BC_SP
                         Topics in Bold
            TF = Trish              IT = Isabel  SF = Shirley

TF   So this is Betacam no. 67, it’s still DAT tape 24, the DAT’s on 36 minutes
     9 seconds, and this is the second Betacam tape interviewing Isabel
     Tarrago and Shirley Finn at Isabel’s house, 3 September 2000.
                    67_BC_SP

     Another part of relationship between black and white, certainly reading
     things like Dawn May, who’s written about the history of Aboriginal people
     in the pastoral industry, talks lots about sexual relationships between black
     and white – a lot of it pretty ugly. She talks about a history of station gins
     and … but going back to the period that you’re familiar with, how did things
     go?

IT   Race Relations/Intersex

     19:01:28:04    Ummm on the station, we didn’t have that much problem, I
     don’t think on Glen Ormiston, but throughout the Channel Country you’d
     have ummm, you’d have people … you’d have big camps, for instance, in
     Boulia. We’d come in for the races, come in for the rodeos or whatever
     carnival you like ummm and a lot of people used to ummm talk about the
     managers from different stations going down to the blacks’ camps, so to
     speak, just on dusk. They’d go down there to see one of the nice girls, fool
     around and probably stay there, and then just on sunrise you’d see them
     going. Ummm a lot of that happened and ahhh and when these girls had the
     babies and all that, weren’t helped. They were forgotten. They had to rear
     the kids up to themselves and ahhh you know a lot of people don’t know
     these things but there is a lot of people out there – managers probably,
     drovers, you know well-to-do men, that have been down that road, been to
     the blacks’ camps just for the young girls.

TF   And did that set up, then, a competition between the white wives and the
     black women in the camps, or was this more something that was when white
     men were out there single? Because I know, for instance, now some of the
     women, like the managers’ wives would talk about bad blood, bad feelings
     between they and young women now working in the stock camps. I’m
     wondering how that influenced relationships between women, black and
     white.

IT   19:03:48:08    A lot of the men were married men at the time. Ummm I
     think there was some ill-feeling there towards them but a lot of them, I think,
     just got on with their lives ummm and sort of forgot that it happened.

TF   So it was just accepted. It was just part of the …?

IT   Women/Work/Aboriginal
     19:04:18:16    Yeah, and I think, you know, what you’re talking about, Trish,
     I think there is some part of the ummm women in the stations who really
     can’t accept that their husbands did fool around and I guess that’s something,
     you know, that you have to come to terms with and, yeah, it does leave a
     nasty feeling in your blood, I guess. I mean, it’s one of those things because
     most of these job camps never had the women other than … black women
     were very good stock, stockwomen, and they were actually helping ummm
     the family too, you know, because you must remember that in those days
     they never got paid and it was family basically getting together in groups.
     And some of the women did go out and help and ummm you know, like my
     mother, for instance, but it wasn’t an instant there that she fooled around
     with the men and that but she was actually in a situation where she could
     have, could control the process, and well she was in a powerful position too
     because she was normally the cook. And, you know, when you’re in these
     positions, you’re in a powerful position like the cook. I mean, because if you
     didn’t cook, I mean, no one would get fed and …

SF   I believe that …

IT   She had young girls working with her, our mother …

SF   She used to bring them over to, from Dajarra …
IT   Or Boulia.

SF   From the camp.

IT   From the camps and that and I mean …

SF   Gender Relations/Race Relations

     She virtually ran the station while the manager was away. He’d go away
     ummm to the bores. A bore might break down. He’d be camped out there
     for a couple of days and she was left on her own at the station with nobody.

TF   Where would the manager’s wife be?

SF   Well, he didn’t have one.

IT   He didn’t have one.

SF   He didn’t have ummm he was a single bloke ummm and ummm …

IT   Gender Relations

     19:06:23:20      And the companion … the wives, you know, managers start I
     don’t know when, but the managers started getting married and coming on
     stations, you know. It was a fairly lonely lifestyle ummm and managers
     started to bring their wives on board then, which really did impact on
     Aboriginal women because women were already at the stations, so the wives
     took over the jobs …

SF   As cooks.

IT   … as cooks, so there was, you know, not only ummm relationship processes
     sexually, there was a economic relationship that white women were taking
     over the role.

TF   So Granny Brown, having been out there much earlier this century, you’re
     saying would have been unusual, and that the standard practice of managers
     having wives came later?
IT   Yeah.

SF   19:07:24:20    I think, in the early part when Mother was growing up there
     was a lot of the older ones, the older managers and their wives that were
     there and then down the line ahhh you got the single ones, the young ones,
     who ummm have just taken over from the older managers ummm and
     they’ve married ahhh people like … people from Boulia and the manager
     now on Glen Ormiston ummm yeah, well they do everything. There’s no
     need to have ummm Aboriginals out there working.

TF   What you’re talking about there, I think, is that the pastoral industry over the
     last five or six decades has come to employ fewer people.

SF   Yes, that’s right.

TF   Do you want to talk about how did the pastoral industry shift over the last
     fifty years?

IT   19:08:18:10    When we were on the stations, ummm they were dentured by
     an Act, you know. All the Aboriginal people that lived on stations were
     under an Aboriginal Act which is that that whole process of welfare, ah of
     money being sent in to your nearest police station, Boulia, Urandangie,
     whatever, and really those stations were built on labour, on you know free
     labour.

TF   Now what’s shifted that?

IT   Pastoral Industry/Aboriginal Labour

     19:08:57:04    What shifted that was the equal opportunities of wages,
     equitable wages for everyone. And what shifted there was what you’ve just
     heard in the last couple of weeks, Malcolm Fraser give the memorial speech
     on Wavell Hill, the Goorinji elder. Now he was the man, the Goorinji elder,
     that changed the face of Aboriginal people working on properties, on
     pastorals, and he challenged, because they were all … they all went on strike.
     So that history of Wavell Hill actually changed the face of pastoral
     employment, which meant that they had to pay Aboriginal people for their
     service. And that’s what Malcolm Fraser was talking about. He still didn’t
     realise that, you know, stations were under this process of Crown, you know,
     politician … oh, Crown what do you call them, Crown legislation. When
     that case came to fruition, it was evident that managers, these station
     managers, who own these stations, could not afford to pay all of us, you
     know. They could not afford, so what they did, they removed everyone
     ’65 we packed the old red Dodge.                 19:10:25:04

SF   Yeah.

IT   But we went up to Jimborella.

SF   That’s right, yes.

IT   That’s our new state place that we stayed and Arthur Price was there. An old
     station manager.

SF   And Barrum Nathan.

IT   Race Relations/Aboriginal Labour

     19:10:37:00    And Barrum Nathan, so Barrum was an Aboriginal man and
     worked with our father and he sort of said … you know, because this was a
     shock to our family. Well my Mum and Dad worked thirty years and never
     got long service, you know, of all that. So we went to Jimborella, what,
     about six hours’ drive or … it’s on the other side of Roxborough. So we all
     arrived up there with our, just a truckload of things, and then my Mum and
     Dad stayed there but I think when that happened my father’s heart just
     collapsed. I mean, he was a man that worked all these stations and when
     equal pay, they couldn’t even look after him. Didn’t even make an effort to
     look after my father and mother. Not even an effort. So we moved.

SF   And from there we …

IT   We went into the … she went in as a cook, that’s what she learnt. As a cook,
     she took up all the hotels.

SF   Hotels. She cooked in Mt Isa, ummm …
IT   Boulia.

SF   Yeah, Boulia.

IT   Cloncurry.

SF   All that, all over. Went to Mt Isa and that’s where we sort of settled, there.
     We went to ummm Isabel from there she ummm …

IT   I didn’t go back to school.

SF   … she ummm went to Batoni’s chemist and worked in Batoni’s chemist.
     Both of us worked in Mt Isa Mines in the mess and ummm …

IT   ’65 I think, wasn’t it?

SF   I think it was the sixties, yeah.

TF   Going back, to understand this you’ve got to go back. Where was your
     mother’s traditional country and where was your father’s traditional country?

IT   Traditional Aboriginal/Native Title

     19:12:24:00     Glen Ormiston. They were born and bred on Glen Ormiston.

SF   On Glen Ormiston station.

IT   My father’s down number six bore, down near Carlo, and my mother was
     born at Meetukka. So that’s our traditional ground. So, you know …

SF   Glen Ormiston is our home.

IT   That’s our home.

TF   And did your parents participate in any way in traditional ceremonies
     associated with that country?

IT   19:12:52:10     Oh, yeah. They were the leading … My mother was the
     leading ceremony singer and my father was a senior law man.

TF   So where was your parents’ traditional country? Your Mum and your Dad?
IT   19:13:07:07    Glen Ormiston station. Ummm my father is born number 6
     bore, that’s down near the Carlo end of Glen Ormiston ummm where all the
     is. That’s our dreaming. And my mother at …

SF   Meetukka.

IT   … Meetukka. Old Glen Ormiston. So where Glen Ormiston’s sitting now,
     that’s the new Glen Ormiston.

SF   Because they had a big Aboriginal camp there.

TF   And did your parents, either of them, participate in traditional responsibilities
     for that Glen Ormiston land?

IT   Oh, yeah. Very, very … my father was a senior law man. Ummm my
     mother was a ceremonial woman who ummm did all the songs and danced
     and … yeah, we’re from very, very high law people and all our family, my
     Dad’s four other brothers, all law men, and ummm …

SF   Well respected.

IT   … well respected.

TF   So how did they manage to combine those traditional responsibilities with
     their work on Glen Ormiston?

IT   Pastoral Industry/Aboriginal Ceremony

     19:14:20:02    Well, they worked it ummm and these are all family in the
     camp. I mean they were all law men in the camp. This is how my father had
     his ummm mustering camp. He had all the law people and that there. They
     did all their station work and when the season finished they all went and did
     ceremony. And they were already there, you know, they were in the bush.
     They could just move and gather there for ceremonies and that. We’ve been,
     Shirley and I have been to a big ceremony there.

SF   19:14:52:10    Big dances when we used to go up to Jimborella for ummm
     Christmas ummm not often we used to go away because ummm at Christmas
     time on the station, one year all the ringers and that, they’d go away to their
     homes because you had jackaroos there who’d come from Sydney, Brisbane
     ummm that couldn’t even ride a horse, and Dad, our father used to teach
     them shoeing, mustering ahhh getting to know the country. And many a time
     you’d get jackaroos out there that would go off on their own, get lost and
     ahhh you wouldn’t be able to find them and Dad would go out and find them
     and they’ll tell him, ‘Oh yes, we’ve killed a cow, ate the raw meat, killed
     something else, ate that raw’. Had no matches or anything like that. Then,
     of course, you couldn’t light fires either because it’d … sometimes there
     we’d ummm it wouldn’t rain and you’d have bushfires and everything like
     that. But yeah, we’d go down the big camp, watch the ceremonies down
     there, and ahhh we’d always … the old ladies would walk us half way
     because it was really dark.       They wouldn’t let us go on our own.
                     19:16:12:22

TF   What you’re saying is there’d be times of the year when the pastoral industry
     didn’t need the labour?

IT   19:16:22:14     Yeah. It stopped on certain areas because you had to have
     time for the cattle to fatten up, so you don’t, you know, you don’t muster all
     year round and certain times of the year, you know, cattle would just be on
     grazing and everyone would just leave and just, you know, get your break,
     have a break.

TF   Dawn May has had instances where stations have actually given Aboriginal
     people big carts to go off for ceremonies. Did you ever hear anything like
     that?

IT   No, we had the sulky. We had our own sulky.

SF   Yeah, we had our own big wagon.

IT   And that dray, it’s there at Glen Ormiston. It’s out the front. That’s my
     father’s …

SF   Big wagon.
IT   … big wagon out the front.

TF   So how would they have bought that without cash wages?

IT   19:17:14:18    That was ummm … this was that exchange program that I call
     in the bush. And Dad used to do a lot of work for a lot of managers and
     people like Sandy Anderson, his father, old Bill Anderson, wasn’t it?

SF   Billy Anderson.

IT   Billy Anderson who owned Tobermory, now Sandy would confirm that.
     Like Bill would say to Dad, send word over to Dad to say, ‘Come in, we
     need some help with all these cattle,’ and he’d go in and, see, people like that
     would give. Dad had his own, you know, own horses, his own stock, and
     ummm I mean I don’t know where the sulky came from but I’d imagine that
     it was given to him ummm in exchange of him doing some sort of work for
     them. Because they weren’t allowed to pay him.

SF   See with that wagon, big wagon they had, was a ummm he used that for
     brumby shooting and they were both, Mother and Father were both drovers
     as well. So that was a way of getting around because they didn’t have cars.

TF   When you said your mother was a significant … I don’t know whether you
     used the expression ‘law woman’, but you said … what did she have
     particular responsibility about? I’m wanting you really to just explain about

IT   Traditional Aboriginal

     19:18:42:04    Well, her significance, my Mum is from … she’s a rainmaker
     and that’s her dreaming and she started the ceremonial songs. Someone has
     to start them, so the ceremonial song is your first place of entry, and that’s an
     important process because you really have to do a lot of work for, you know,
     the songs and these are ceremony songs so it’s only heard for ceremony and
     you’ve got to know a repertoire of songs. And our mother could just, you
     know, she spoke five languages, so she had such a ummm an intellect of
     language and yet she couldn’t write English. I mean, that’s irrelevant. But
     this, you know, woman was the pinnacle for any ceremony.
TF   And she had responsibility, was it

IT   No, that’s my mother’s father.

TF   Right, what is

IT   Pituri
     19:19:57:10      Pituri is a narcotic drug.    That’s in the white terms of
     reference because Pam Watson told me. I didn’t know that. Pituri is a
     narcotic drug but pituri is also a ceremony drug and it’s my grandmother …
     my father’s mother’s dreaming, and it is our dreaming now, and we are the
     holders of that law. And I know for a fact that people do go down and try
     and cut pituri. When we last went down to the pituri place, there was
     nothing harvest because no one’s using it now ummm and I know Pam went
     down there to try and get the seeds to try and propagate it so, you know, it
     can be grown out of the area, but it just didn’t survive. So it must need that
     whole sand dune, you know …

SF   Sand hills.

IT   Sand hills to grow but it also needs a harvest.         We’re not doing that
     ceremony any longer. Shirley and I have got the song. My mother sang my
     grandmother’s songs. We’ve got it on tape. We know the songs. It’s on
     tape, recorded, so you know. The people can’t claim that area because that’s
     our area and it’s the significance of that.

TF   The Georgina River was very important to the pastoral industry but could
     you explain. It had significance too for the trade in pituri didn’t it?

IT   Channel Country: Water

     19:21:30:20      Oh yes. Pituri was traded across traditional boundaries and in
     our ceremony, we have two dreamings -             and the Arepa. Arepa’s a dog
     and the dog actually carries the pituri in its mouth and it travels the sand
     dunes right up to Lawn Hills. And that’s where that dreaming track goes. It
     goes along the sand, the old Simpson Desert rabbit fence, right along the
     sand dunes, right up to the Lawn Hills National Park, and the significance of
     that is dreaming pathways. Now for the white people, the Georgina never
     dries. It’s always a water that passes through there and it runs into the
     Mulligan, it runs into many other, Diamantina, many other rivers that it goes
     into but it’s a significant place for pastoralists because it’s always the
     watering hole for their stock. But it was also significant for us because it was
     our survival. We travelled the Georgina to do our ceremonies and ummm
     it’s that, you know, where’s there’s water there’s food. So it is a pathway of
     two cultures.

TF   So white and black have valued the same places.

IT   Race Relations

     19:23:04:24     Yeah, for different reasons. And once the pastoralist takes the
     reason that their stock is more important to human, well then that’s where the
     rivalry starts. But it hasn’t because we’ve all used it and I think we can still
     use it if we understand our terminology of how do we learn to handle the
     landscape in which we live in. Because that’s the fundamental reason why
     pastoralists, in our time, got on so well. Because they could understand the
     reason. When our family wanted to go and do their ceremonies and be very
     proud Aboriginal traditional people, we were allowed to do it but it’s when
     someone says you can’t do that is when they overstep the mark and says that
     my, you know, the white culture is more superior than the black. It’s when
     we get into trouble.

TF   The picture I’m getting in my head, and I’m interested whether you agree
     with this, is we’re not talking progress here, we’re talking with complex
     mixture, like when your parents were working on Glen Ormiston they were
     under this horrific Act, they weren’t getting cash wages, somebody could hit
     your mother with a bough switch or whatever, and yet on the other hand,
     they were living on their traditional country. Now, there’s wages, there’s
     legal rights or whatever, and yet you two don’t go to Glen Ormiston.

IT   No.

TF   How do you understand that passage of history, positive and negative?
IT       Topsy Hansen

         19:24:49:14   With sadness, I think, but it … the thing that really helped us
         was that they allowed ummm like the company stakeholders, or shareholders
         … Glen Ormiston’s shareholders actually allowed, because Bill Fraser was
         on the managing board of directors then and I said to Bill, ‘We’ve got to take
         …’ well Mum actually told Bill. Mum knew Bill very well because Mum
         actually gave Bill the history, you know, he’s a young fellow ummm that
         didn’t know much history of the stations and Mum said to Bill, ‘You make
         sure my ashes go back home, Bill,’ and he said, ‘Topsy, I’ll always do that’.
         So that’s when we went, when Mum died. I think that was ummm something
         that allowing her ashes to go back to her birthplace was a very significant
         ummm process for us, but even for her. But I think our, you know, with the
         new managers and that, you can’t go back. They can’t go back into that
         history because they don’t know it, they didn’t live it, they don’t know it.
         And I don’t even know if it was safe for them, you know, the new managers.
         But ummm …

SIDE B

TF       Let’s go back a bit. Who owns Glen Ormiston? Legally owned, leaving
         aside traditional owners.    But when you were kids, who owned Glen
         Ormiston?

IT       19:26:17:06   Mrs Fraser from Muldoolin owned Glen Ormiston, owned it.
         So that’s where the Fraser family ummm but Bill senior, because he was the,
         he was one of the elders.

SF       Yeah, I think it was Collins and White.

IT       Who they married into.

SF       Yes.

IT       That reign of ummm will give you the history.
SF   Yes it was Collins and White Company but then it was broken down into a
     pastoral …

TF   NAPCO took it over, I think, didn’t they?

SF   Yes, but it …

IT   Race Relations

     19:27:02:12     Yes, but that’s after she died. Mrs Fraser owned it. In her
     will she said never to remove the blacks from here. They are always to have
     a place in their, Glen Ormiston, because I think that she realised way back
     that, you know, when somehow through that whole history of families when
     they bought it, and when, I think when she died – she was killed at
     Muldoolin just down here near Beaudesert in a car crash – not long after that,
     I think they kept it on for a while but then they sold it and shareholders took
     over. I don’t know the history all that much.

TF   She was a relative of Malcolm?

IT   Yeah, she was Malcolm Fraser’s aunty and that’s how Malcolm came out to
     Glen Ormiston all the time because Mother kept saying, you know, when
     Malcolm was Prime Minister ummm …

SF   He was only a young fellow then.

IT   Yeah, when he came out.

SF   Actually I didn’t know that until I read it in the book.

IT   Topsy Hansen/Malcolm Fraser

     19:28:09:18     Yeah. Well Mum used to show off with him because I used to
     work in Foreign Affairs in Canberra and I said ummm … he’d say, ‘Bring
     your mother around,’ because he was Prime Minister, and she’d go to
     Parliament House and he’d be showing off like a, you know, prized peacock
     in the House, at Parliament House in Canberra, and he’d always
     acknowledge Mum. And he took her to, you know, the very posh dinner
     place up there, Parliament House dinner, you know, where they have the …
     Mum would be welcome and see one of the things, Trish, when Aboriginal
     women looked after these young charge kids, young kids, they spoke
     language too.    There’s another friend of mine that, who’s the major of
     Burketown Shire Council, she had an Aboriginal woman working. All of her
     kids speak                             so it’s nothing unusual for the young
     white kids to come out and talk language with all of us, because they weren’t
     ostracised, you know, they were embraced, and I think Malcolm felt very,
     very ummm at home with my mother because he was always very fond of
     her and so did Bob Katter senior. Mother looked after his kids and, you
     know, Footes from Mt Isa Mines, Batoni.        These are all the people …
                     19:29:37:10

SF   Tony, Tony McGrady.

IT   Not Tony, we didn’t have Tony McGrady.

SF   Oh not out there but she worked with him in Mt Isa.

IT   Yeah, she worked in Mt Isa but didn’t look after his kids. But old Bob Katter
     senior …

TF   So how was it, if Malcolm Fraser’s aunt has said the Aboriginal people are
     always to stay here. That wasn’t what happened.

IT   19:30:32:08     I don’t know, Trish. That’s what my Mum told me and I
     think, in the end, you know, the Fraser family ummm I mean these stations
     are so huge and so big and I guess, you know, they’ve got a business
     enterprise to think about and it’s quite hard to maintain the stations as they
     were and, you know, the beef I think too, at that time, that things … the
     dynamics just changed. I mean, I wasn’t very interested and I don’t suppose
     Shirley and those, we all went our different ways.

SF   Pastoral Industry

     19:31:11:10     And I think, too, you have ummm ummm the old station
     manager, old Martin Hayward, at that time, when he left he knew all the
     Aboriginals like the people in the camps, they moved away.           Ummm
     everything sort of changed with new managers and the way they managed
     things. Helicopters took over. Motorbikes took over. There was no need
     ummm for the Aboriginal stockmen, or any stockmen. Maybe just the odd
     jackaroo who wants to come out and learn how to ride a horse, you know.

TF   So the pastoral industry came to need much less labour in total?

SF   Yes, I think so.

IT   19:32:05:00     I think you find that everywhere. But it was very sad, Trish,
     that, you know, our parents couldn’t even get long service and …

SF   Yeah, Dad worked there thirty years                      Mum was the cook.
     Our mother was the cook for twenty-eight years.

IT   And you have got that and, you know, that’s what I keep saying to Shirley
     that even our sister Bessie, I mean you know you don’t hear much of us talk
     about Bessie because she was already gone …

SF   Yes, she was …

IT   … and moved on into another station. She was at Roxborough with Mary
     Robbins …

SF   Mary and Bill Robbins.

IT   … and then moved into …

SF   Then after they left there, she went to Cloncurry.

IT   … Cloncurry. You know, so she had another life.

SF   And our brother, he – George – he went, he lived in Boulia because he was
     one of the first Aboriginal jockeys ummm to do the country. He never rode
     metropolitan or anything like that. He was out in Boulia, Dajarra, riding
     horses there.
TF   And you said, Shirley, that you went off to boarding school when you were
     little but you ended up doing stock work as well. How did that work?

SF   19:33:20:14    Well, I used to … when we used to go, went to boarding
     school, I’d go home during Christmas and ummm help Mum in the house
     doing odd jobs and that for pocket money and things and ummm we used to
     just … every time Christmas came, we’d just go horse riding, you know,
     mustering cattle with Dad and things like that.

TF   So what year would we be talking now? Approximately.

SF   Probably back in the fifties. Fifties and sixties.

TF   Was this riding just for pleasure or was it part of the work of the property?

SF   Physical Hardships

     19:34:08:12    Pleasure and part of the work ummm and helping Mother
     ummm in, because she was the cook. She was the only woman other than
     the camp that ummm was in charge of the station and ummm to help her out
     and … because in those days you didn’t have washing machines and it was a
     big boiler that you put all the clothes in, stoke the fire up and you’d starch
     everything. You’d starch sheets and all those years they weren’t coloured
     sheets, they were white sheets and, you know, in the red dust you’d be racing
     around trying to shut the house up to stop the dust from getting in. But, yes,
     I’d help Mother on the station many times at Christmas time. But then, of
     course, we’d only come home at Christmas time. We wouldn’t come home
     three times a year. 19:35:13:20

TF   Were you paid for that work?

SF   Yes, a little pocket money. We’d get … that would be our Christmas …
     we’d go into town then and buy ummm our Christmas, do our Christmas
     shopping.

TF   And how was it, you were at private schools, that obviously took cash.
     Where did the money for your education come from?
SF   Mum and Dad worked.

IT   And then we got …     19:35:43:18