2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Forbes’s lips are moving, and she struggles to lift herself on her thin elbows. Florence movesto soothe the labouring woman.‘Mrs Hathaway, I want to be buried next to Mr Page.’ 248 The effort exhausts her, and shelies back on the pillow. Florence pats her thin hair.‘Mrs Forbes, we can arrange a lovely plot for you in the new cemetery.’‘No, I told my sons, I want to be buried next to Mr Page. Udnyu, see.’ Florence frowns.There has not been a word of that language spoken in her house, and she does not follow.‘Nyanga, Mr Page. He was a good man.’ Rebecca’s eyes are closed again.‘I’ll see what we can do, Mrs Forbes. Of course. I’ll talk to Bill.’ Florence leaves theroom, and closes the door behind her.Copley, 2001Granny Dolly has thick round glasses through which she looks at me carefully. She holds hertwo hands out in front of her, emphatically laying a direction for me.Mrs. Forbes should have been buried this way, not…’ and she twists her hands ninetydegrees. ‘Not at the feet. I told her son that. And she should have been buried with ourpeople because she grown up with us, was one of us. 249Earlier that day, on the other side of the railway tracks, I had been told by one of the olderwhite residents:She should be buried here [at Copley cemetery], not under a bush out there. But she was awhite so couldn’t be buried with Aborigines so the grave’s on its own. They should moveit. There’s just her and that missionary who slit his throat. If you kill yourself they can’tgive you a Christian burial so he was buried up on the hill. They shouldn’t have buried herthere. 250I visited the graves each time I went to Nepabunna, with sadness and a frown. A fallingchicken wire and mulga fence surrounded them. One, a neat rectangle of white gravel with a173