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 Oneit a lot you know, and I don’t think the people really got over the shock. (Yuras still go totalk to the grave saying ‘Why did you do that to us?’ Yuras always do that.)…I think thatthey probably thought ‘How could he do this?’ You know, he was a missionary, he was aman of the God, and a white fella as well: how could he possibly do that you know? Orwhy did he do it? Yes. 196Nepabunna, 2001Granny Gertie was a teenage girl at Nepabunna when Mr Page died. She put it down torumours that he had had children with Aboriginal women further north, and drew on otherinstances to back it up: Mr Warren and missionary Pearce at Finniss Springs, and the arrestand imprisonment of the superintendent of the Bungalow half-caste home in Alice Springsfor sexual abuse of the girls, just the year before Jim’s death. 197 She was adamant that as hedied, he said ‘I got to weep it, I got to weep it’…’ might be, God made him to think about it.’She said:…he waited till the mail truck come. When the mail truck come he went in and going toget the mailbag and done that. Because he didn’t want any of the black fellows to get theblame for it.I grappled with that phrase ‘I’ve got to weep it,’ but could get little from it beyond a senseof repentence. Gertie went on.‘Oh, we couldn’t, we couldn’t rest too, everybody was crying, everybody was crying forhim, we had no church that morning.’ 198During my next visit, I tried again to understand ‘weeping it’:‘What’s the meaning when he said ‘I’m going to weep it’?’ I asked.‘Weep it: he got to weep them. His mind I suppose. Yes, to get it away. Now well, themail truck was there and they wanted to pick him up, and he said ‘No, let it go, let it go.’And he went inside and he died. Nyanga, oh everybody was crying for him.132