2011 - Theses - Flinders University

White Lives in a Black Community: The lives of Jim Page and Rebecca Forbes in the Adnyamathanha communityTracy SpencerVolume One Creative Writing Component: Excerpted Chapters from Volume Three Appendix OneNyanga, they said—often—as they recounted what they remembered and what they hadheard. ‘Nyanga’ was yura ngarwala (Adnyamathanha language) meaning the speaker feels‘sorry’ or ‘sad’ that that person is no longer with them. It prefaced remembrances of thosewho had passed on, and the tone in which it was said filled the small room with quiet, and weall looked at our laps for a time.I travelled east from Copley, toward Nepabunna over varying grades of gravel and crossingand recrossing the elusive Finke Creek and its tributaries. Past Depot Springs Station, and MtSerle, and Angepena. I slowed down as I passed by Minerawuta, also called Ram PaddockGate, part of the old Burr Well Station now subsumed into Depot Springs. To the left I sawthe piles of shale where the huts had been, and to the right the small campsite studded withtwo rows of forked sticks that had once held up a camp stretcher. I continued over a raisedgrid, and past the sign welcoming travelers to Adnyamathanha lands, until I turned right intoCliff’s homelands, known as Iga Warta. In an open shed he had erected as a camp kitchen,Cliff told me what the last generation of elders told him about Mr Page:And to me now, and even to elders that I spoke to, it is that when he committed suicide,they were feeling no good because it happened before Christmas. It gave them a badChristmas in 1935. And for a missionary they got to really know and love. They had a lotof time for him. But they felt that he was stressed out. They said ‘nyanga’, ‘nyanga thisudnyu wants to do something for us, but he can’t, you know’. 'Nyanga' means he’s tryinghis best, but he failed so he took his life. Maybe he was trying to get attention from the restof the state or rest of Australia saying: ‘You know there’s these people. Don’t forget theseblack people’. 7A few more kilometers up the road and I arrived at Nepabunna to visit Granny GertieJohnson, one of the oldest Adnyamathanha women. The kitchen tap dripped in the10