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 OneIga Warta, 2001When I interviewed Cliff several years later, in the cultural tourism centre he and his familyhad built, he reflected on Jim’s refusal to try and convince yuras to live like white people.…Then Page was told if he didn’t do that he would be then posted away. And the thing isthat they got him to be picked up just before Christmas in 1935. It was 22nd of December1935. He committed suicide. Yes, he was stressed out, that’s what the [Adnyamathanha]people said too. 190Of all the old people who passed story and history to Cliff, he said none had mentioned tohim about Page having an affair:Maybe they mightn’t have been told that, or see some of the things in Adnyamathanhawere taboo you know, like if anything happened they wouldn’t mention it, so its not goingto carry on. 191Port Augusta, 2003Irene Mohammed, Andy Coulthard’s daughter, shares the story she remembers, now that hermother Dolly cannot recall so clearly.My father tried to help Mr. Page when he did what he did to himself, but he pushed himaway, he didn’t want help. My father always said he was a really good friendly fellow whoworked with the people and wanted to do a lot for the Adnyamathanha people. That’s whyhe did what he did because he wanted to do things for the people but he couldn’t do much.That’s all I heard. They didn’t talk about him and in those times children weren’t meant toask things and the adults didn’t tell them. 192Copley, 2001Dolly was still living independently at Copley when I first asked her about Mr Page. She saidher husband, Andy Coulthard, tried to stop Jim’s bleeding with a pepper packet, but couldn’t.She wasn’t there: her family were away at Beltana when Jim died. They heard about it on130