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 OneHawker, 2001Ken McKenzie had first told me what his father had told him, sitting in the Copley caravanpark, with a guitar on his knees. Now I asked him to tell me again, for the tape, in the loungeroom of my church manse in Hawker. 183‘When sometimes people said bad things against Mr Page, was it about those sort of thingshe did?’ I asked.Well the word got around: some of them said that he was running around with theAboriginal woman. That’s what word got around: some of the bad things. But Dad saidthat was all lies to blacken his name, you know. You see I was told [that] some of the non-Aboriginal people started some of this caper, till it got back to some of the Aboriginalpeople afterwards. What caused him to take his life? I was told by Dad that someone gotin touch with his girlfriend and said that he was just no good. 184‘Oh he had a girlfriend?’ I asked, curious.‘He had a girlfriend, yes.’‘Where was she?’‘She was somewhere, I don’t know whereabouts. Dad never told me that. But whathappened: she sent him a horrible letter or something like that, or got in touch with him byphone, and said she was finished with him. That upset him more: he had all these kind ofthings happening. But what made him to take his life? I think [it] was all this stress youknow. He said he loved the Aboriginal people. He wanted - he wanted something. Inthose days he was really like the people today wanting the best for Aboriginal people buthe was in at the wrong time I guess. It wasn’t a time for that. But it should have been, youknow.’ 185Ken fell silent for a moment, and looked through the curtainless picture window to the streetand the sky.‘I say it should have been at that time,’ he repeated.124