2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Section B: IdentityRefer to Book 2 Exegesis Essay ThreeLife Writing Chapter Five‘She’s going to marry one…’: Jack and Rebecca’s WeddingQuorn, 2001Just how and when Becky Castledine made her way out of Sydney to the west of New SouthWales, I can’t tell you, but by 1913 she’s at Winbar Station, west of Bourke, on the DarlingRiver. I’ve poked around libraries and archives and the corners of brains, but that’s the bestthat records and memory can do. Becky’s granddaughter was in no doubt as to why she wentwest: ‘My grandmother reckoned, Rebecca reckoned, if she meets her first Aboriginal manshe’s going to marry one. I think she done that.’ 49Adelaide, 2003‘Oh yes,’ I’m told, by Mary Woods, in her neat fibro house in suburban Adelaide, ‘Yes, MrsForbes had an ambition of marrying a full blood much to the dismay of her family inEngland.’ 50 Mrs Woods grinned, remembering the cups of tea she shared at Mrs Forbes tablein Nepabunna, breaking her trip to or from the station where she and her husband worked.‘She had an ambition of marrying a full blood ... she never did give any indication that sheregretted the move,’ Mary told me, earnestly, and poured me another cup of tea. 51Western NSW, 1913From Sydney, you take a train west, falling off the edge of the world as the train zigzagsdown the Great Dividing Range and into the plain below. Then the line runs away forever35