2011 - Theses - Flinders University

Nepabunna, Flinders Ranges, 2001On the northern side of Nepabunna, I visited Gertie Johnson in her new house, a stylishcurved corrugated iron affair in cream and terracotta tones, set with wide windowsoverlooking the convergence of creeks that lead to the Nepabunna waterhole. I knocked onthe newly painted door.‘Who is it?’ Breath whistled past teeth, and I could hear the scrape of a chair and footstepsscuffing the floor.‘Granny Gertie, it me, Tracy. Murray Muirhead’s wife,’ I called though the dense securitymesh. I did not share my husband’s surname, but knew his name would be fresh in hermemory from recent funerals he had conducted.‘Ah, Murray. Tracy – Tracy! Come in.’ She opened the door to me, lips smiling beneathher hooked nose, her white hair straight and at irregular angles, intensifying the rich brown ofher face. I nodded at her daughter, who was already putting the kettle on for a cup of tea.Gertie and I prepared to settle ourselves at the table, with photographs and tape recorderbetween us.I was missing my own children, and had Gertie’s great granddaughter climbing on and offmy lap as we talked. Gertie told me about the ‘teddy bear’, and showed me its picture in anarticle by anthropologist Herbert Basedow which showed a prehistoric wombat-like creaturecalled diprotodon he believed had co-existed with humans in the Flinders Ranges. 116 Yurastold linguist Dorothy Tunbridge about it in the 1980’s, the yamuti that ate people but couldn’tbend its neck to look upwards. Only the urngis or clever men could see it. 117Surely Beckywould have known the story that Granny Gertie told me:71