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 Onewould wind me up. This is the man who gave young boys hammers and chalk to pulverise tosmithereens when they’re getting too rowdy for their mums, and let toddlers up-end each ofthose neat drawers, only to spend hours tidying them away after the visit. It was Bob who satin bed with my infant godson, and fed him chocolates, while Bob polished off the Port, andwaited for the soft reprimand from his saintly wife. Bob turned to grin at me: he’d thought ofsomething.‘I’m thinking this missionary, Jim, wouldn’t be used to riding: he’d get pretty sore. Ohyeah. Sky pilot, eh? He’d be a sweaty arse I reckon. Want plenty of lard on that seat, Ireckon.’ Bob was the king of ambiguity, and I reasoned this sky pilot should leave it wellalone.Bob leared. ‘Ooh, yeah, you’d want to rub plenty into that seat’, and he rubbed his bum.Copley, April 1930There is only one track, and it crosses wide snaking creek beds, and recrosses them, until Jimwonders if he has reached the other side or not. He sweats, but the wind dries his shirt andlifts it off his back, tugging gently but insistently at his chest and his shoulders. Jim feels eachtwist of hard rope in his tyres slipping against the sharp rocks of the track. The frame echoeswith each dull thud, and he takes the uneven vibration through his wrists and elbows. He ispuffing now, and looking only at the path before his wheel. When he stops to slash somewater into his hat, he takes a moment to look around, gasping. Behind him the track slipsaway quickly, covering itself with trembling tree tops and plump folds in the hillsides. Infront of him, it is the same. He exists only on this short tongue of beaten earth, without84