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 Oneand the failures brought to Aboriginal people by Christian ‘missions’, missionaries andministers. In my mind I heard the voices of Adnyamathanha people I had come to know well,and remembered trips in the car together, conversations in dusty driveways, drinking strongcups of tea, and grieved those who had passed on. As I sat so long in reverie, my screensaverappeared on my computer screen showing ridge folding on range—the peaks ofYourambulla, Yappala, Druid Range, Elder Range, Aroona Valley, Wilpena Pound—in thecountry that had been my home, if only for seven years.I was not an objective researcher capturing a moment in history. I had lived with thesetimes and places and people, even while gathering stories of the dead. Even the dead changewith time. I knew that: since I started the research, a sturdy wire fence had been builtsurrounding the tiny cemetery, and a headstone dignified Rebecca’s grave with a brass plaqueincorporating an oval photograph of her, looking out and away from Jim’s mulga cross.To tell these stories, I would need to thread together moments in Jim and Rebecca’shistories, and my own, and yours too, so that the living story of Rebecca and Jim with theAdnyamathanha people could take shape in our own time.Copley – Nepabunna Rd, Flinders Ranges, 2001.The stories of Jim and Rebecca were known and told best by those who knew them, and livedwith them, and who had been hearing and telling their stories for seventy years and more.So I travelled to Copley, an hour west of Nepabunna, where a group of elderlyAdnyamathanha women lived. Copley is the forgotten and tired cousin of the new LeighCreek, the mining town that provides South Australia’s power source. The coal train rail line8