Something to remember me by
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 8: People like Us
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Mark Mordue
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In the summer of 1992, the Aboriginal band Sunrize, a group of heavy rock musicians from Maningrida in Arnhem Land, decided to pay me a visit in Sydney.
I'd toured through the Northern Territory outback with them a few years earlier and it was now my turn to show them round "my country". They were flying in to headline the Survival Day show at La Perouse on Australia Day and I was the only close friend they had in town. There was never any question my home would become their home when they arrived.
I was living in an old terrace in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills, a happily dingy joint with cracks in the wall so big they allowed you to see through into the next house. A round table in the kitchen and the butt end of an old tomato nailed to the noticeboard (breakfast rage) completed the domestic bliss.
I was freelancing for rock'n'roll magazines and having the lazy time of my life. A visit from half a dozen traditional Aboriginal men from Australia's Top End was well into the realms of the unpredictable, but they were rock'n'roll and so was I and that seemed enough to seal the occasion. Nonetheless I began battening down the hatches and warned all my friends that I had some pretty unusual visitors coming to stay. This is how it happened according to my diary at the time.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 20: "Mozzie here. Just ringing to let you know we're at the airport. Be there in an hour. We got to wait for our guitars and equipment."
The invasion has begun.
Ben Pascoe of Sunrize is calling, familiar with his nickname and its laughable reflection on his skinny bones and fuzzy burst of hair. Known as the "Jimi Hendrix of Arnhem Land", Ben's phone voice betrays a nervous excitement at being down in the big smoke to show there's more to Aboriginal culture than Papunya-Tula dot paintings and Yothu Yindi dance songs.
After the group arrives, we sit and watch Basic Instinct on the video over a couple of bottles of Tooheys. Terry Pascoe (Ben's brother and the band's bassist) thinks Sharon Stone is "too sweet", lingering over his vowels in a way that suggests he'd be next in line for the icepick if it were possible.
Terry has already got my video clock operating and is helping me out big time with wiring up my new stereo. A graduate in broadcast journalism from Batchelor College, Terry's been working for the local Maningrida community television station – doing everything from reading the news to making programs on the greenhouse effect. Inevitably, he's made a Sunrize on the Road video of their tour through the Kimberley in Western Australia. We'll watch that later, too.
Wayne Kala Kala (drums) and Kenny Smith (guitar) meanwhile peruse photos of my family and my girlfriend, keen as ever to know my "relations" with other people as well as where and who they are. Living tribally in an extended family identified by a complex "skin" system, they've long ago named me "bulang" (brother to Wayne), taught me that my father is "duwa" and that my totems are black crow, brolga and red rock kangaroo. Other than that I know the words for tobacco ("jumbucco"), light ("bol") and goodbye ("bobo") in Burrara (bra-da) language.
That's basically the full extent of my traditional knowledge. In return, these Arnhem men have their own concerns about their first visit to an east coast city.
Wayne has been fretting that junkies with needles might stab him while he walks down the street. Kenny wants to find "some ganja". Horace Wala Wala (clapstick, tambourine, didgeridoo, vocals) goes for a trip to Food Plus, bright eyed with the possibility of "checking it out".
In the Territory, Horace is renowned as "Mr Check It Out", a sociable adventurer if ever there was one. There's a Yogi Bear-like devilry to him, a hip-swivelling humour that seems to license him for mischief of any kind. Wayne's nickname is "Caveman", for reasons that are apparent – he is hairy, short and stocky, extremely strong and mostly silent. When he does shout though, it's usually high on the Richter scale. Terry gets called "Red Face", a mystery never explained to me. And Kenny is known as "The Terminator" due to his love of gaudy reflector sunglasses.
Their white-trash roadie, Tom Pryce, has the most bizarre nickname of all, "Careless Horserider". He passes on a message hello to me from Andrew McMillan, the self-styled Hunter S. Thompson of the Territory, and keenly tries to engage me on everything from true love to Truman Capote. In the meantime, Sunrize's manager, Denise Officer Brewster – a one-time publicist for Midnight Oil – insists that I lay down the law with all of
them. "They can be real slobs if you don't watch out. Just don't let Horace do any of his midnight specials. He likes to come home at all hours and cook up a feed."
With this advice burning in my ears, Denise charges off with her new boyfriend, an ex-roadie for Mental As Anything. I'm left with the gang. And Basic Instinct. Too sweet.
Later, Kenny learns how to operate the clicker for the gas stove with explosive results. He gradually closes in on the jet-plate from about a foot away, clicking till the gas ignites with a mighty whoosh. The rest of the band cheers the huge burst of flame. Welcome to Sydney.
THURSDAY NIGHT JANUARY 21: I can't sleep so I go downstairs, where the smell of burnt meat and toast is still in the air. Horace is asleep in a lounge chair by a frypan of half-eaten sausages. Everyone else slumbers, and already the pungent, acrid-sweet smell of body odour and sweat is settling in for the duration.
Only Ben is awake, eating in front of the television set with a bottle of tomato sauce at his side. A TV docudrama on the transvestite peccadillos of J. Edgar Hoover is blasting its lighted silence across the lounge room that has now become his bedroom. He has made himself a cup of tea, "just with the hot water out of the tap". It's all mod cons here: "The Ben Pascoe Television Suite" with a bare floor and a sleeping bag to throw over himself is in full luxurious swing.
Ben sighs about how he doesn't have any cigarettes. There's a Food Plus over the road, I tell him, open all night. "Mmm," he sighs again, "the fellas are asleep so I don't have anyone to keep me company."
Taking the hint and restless as hell, I offer to do some "company keeping" with him. As Ben ties the shoelaces of his runners, he tells me that "we Aboriginal people believe in our spiritual way that if a person cannot sleep someone is thinking of them, maybe a lover, family, someone close to them". He flutters his hand over his heart with a light final beat to his chest and says, "true!"
I tell him how much I love that idea, that I can't get my girlfriend out of my head right now and I'm missing her like crazy. "Well, she must be thinking of you. When you think of someone like that their spirit is with you. She calls you or maybe you call her. You can't see her, maybe you don't even know exactly that she is there, but you can feel her."
Bathing in the thought of this hidden calling, I travel through the 2am Cleveland Street air to Food Plus with Ben, where he picks up his pack of smokes and decides to phone his family in Arnhem Land.
Will they be awake?
"Mmm! They'll be watching videos. We like Terminator 2. We like Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves ¼ Have you seen that? Good movie!"
While Ben feeds the STD phone, I sit in the gutter with my strawberry Freezie – "the new taste sensation" – sucking at the sweet ice and looking at the night's rainy mist. Ben gets through to his sister's house and the Burrara language rolls and bubbles across the bitumen and neon of the Food Plus, casually occupying the morning space as the word "aya" is repeated again and again in affirmation.
How is my girlfriend? I wonder. Somewhere in Tokyo, that slice of life seemingly cut like a vision from Bladerunner. How is Ben's pregnant wife, Elizabeth, his sons Deltone and Isaiah, one named for rock'n'roll, one named from the Bible?
"Aya, aya ... "
SATURDAY JANUARY 23: Bacon an eggs courtesy of Horace's cooking help kick the day off to a robust start. The band is playing a series of supports with Spy V Spy around Sydney so they enjoy the benefits of a professional road crew as well as "Careless Horserider" Tom's regular stage support. To pay back for favours and various fringe benefits from the Spy V Spy crew, Sunrize offer them their silk-screened tour T-shirts for free. Horace finds it particularly amusing when I go into a tirade about "you guys from Arnhem Land coming down here offering us T-shirts, broken mirrors and beads and thinking you can just buy Sydney!"
In the meantime, I start having a hay-fever attack. This time Ben reckons that, according to Aboriginal beliefs, it means "just maybe" my girlfriend is speaking my name.
Uh huh. I begin to wonder if doing anything from opening a can of beans to watching television might have mystic significance for my love life, but despite the joke Ben and Horace are adamant about this piece of information.
Terry goes off with Denise to look for a bass amplifier, so I take Ben, Horace, Wayne and Kenny for a walk around the neighbourhood: Surry Hills, Oxford Street and Hyde Park, with the Centrepoint Tower always looming in the inclement greyness, past the city's notable buildings, on the new monorail, then the underground train to Kings Cross (Wayne doesn't like it, he feels like he is being buried), to coffee at the Tropicana (no Coca-Cola or lemonade – the boys are disappointed and I'm embarrassed that urban sophistication can't meet such basic desires for soft drink), and finally home again on foot through Darlinghurst and along Bourke Street ("this is where all the artists and drug addicts live").
Wayne buys himself a new pair of runners from a trendy, overpriced boutique. Horace smiles about the monorail, nonplussed – "it's something different." Kenny has seen the city before as a touring member of Warumpi Band in the early eighties and as part of a dance troupe with David Gulpilil, who, legend has it, split Kenny's head open with a shovel during an argument. He compares the fountain in Hyde Park to one he saw in Rome. Some local Kooris across a road wave to the Sunrize boys, not because they know them personally but just because they recognise kin. Ben slaps his arm to demonstrate the colour that these local people so respect.
By the time we get home, the lads at least know where they are in the city and hopefully how not to get lost. I test them on where they are in relation to the Centrepoint Tower and they all pass. But they think it's the funniest thing when they ask me which way the sun rises and I say I don't know.
Backstage that night before their Spy V Spy support at a western-suburbs hotel, Sunrize paint themselves up with ochre. Kenny says he wants to paint the totems they have given me on my chest and get Terry to interview me for the Maningrida community station. Tables are being turned.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 27: Kenny is splashing on Brut aftershave like nobody's business and the scent can be smelt wafting from room to room. On the bus out to the Annandale Hotel the windows have to be opened to allow a little bit of air. Apparently Kenny is on a date later tonight. Horace thinks Kenny's nickname "The Terminator" should be changed to "Mr Bruto". "Like that one in Popeye. Same name," adds Wayne authoritively. "Bruto. Brutus. Always trying to get that Olive Oil."
At the hotel, a girl approaches Kenny after the show and the first thing she says is, "You smell nice." Horace and I giggle our heads off. Mr Bruto will stick.
Back at my place we all get drunk and sit round on swags spilled across the lounge-room floor. Everybody is throwing wisdoms and words at me at a cracking pace to test how much I am learning, and we get onto names and meanings. It turns out that Terry, Ben and Horace all share the same totem, "baru" or crocodile. This makes them close with Mandawuy Yunupingu, a countryman from the same region.
Leaping in with pride, I explain that my last name is an Anglicised version of a French phrase that means "man of death". Descended from a group of knights who fought during one of the holy crusades, it was an oath taken to fight to the death for their faith. "I love it. That's how I want to be with my writing. To the death." Terry gets very excited and starts to touch his chest. "Oh, I feel that. It went right into me when you said it." Grabbing the others, he insists, "You are going to live a very long time. I know."
They make me sit in a certain place and explain that because I am Wayne's "brother" (wa-wa) I shouldn't really ever sit beside him. I've been Wayne's brother now for three years, during which time I have always assumed I should try to sit next him, only to feel a rather distant reception from him that would strangely dissolve again in later, looser company. Three years of this and at last I have it figured out for me. Thanks, guys!
Aside from their skin-system affecting marriage choices and incest taboos, what you can eat (never your sacred totems) and where you can travel, it also determines social situations and actions like where you sit, whom you can demand favours from, even whom you can make fun of and whom with. Apparently Kenny is my man for having a laugh about anybody else.
Kenny and Wayne call my attention in the rabble of conversation by shouting "bulang!" Then Kenny wings his arms out in an expansive gesture to take in me, on his left, and Wayne, on his right. Totemically, he explains, "we are birds".
SATURDAY JANUARY 30: The backyard is full of tongues, rolling and laughing. Kenny and Ben take turns to strum on an acoustic guitar and are singing a sweet song by the Raminginning group Top End Barra Band. I ask Wayne what it is about and he says, "I dunno. I'm French."
Denise has already told me that when the group filled out their census forms at her house, there wasn't enough room on the form to include all the languages they spoke between them. "It added up to something like 16 languages."
Tribal areas are mapped by language, which also gives identity to Aboriginal people. Sunrize are made up of the Burrara, which is Ben, Terry and Horace; Burmalki, which is Kenny; and Gun-Air, which is Wayne. All these languages are merely the primary language through which they are identified, invariably passed on from whatever the mother's original tongue is. They also learn their father's tongue and many others.
As Wayne says of his own language, beginning to teach me, "You say it like air. Like the air we breathe!" Wayne is educating me in everything from basic phrases to dirty words and some beautiful translations like the one he manages for "writer": Gun-goich gar-bang-gun gar-bim-bun djura gun-jar-de dor-dang. In English, it becomes "He who knows in his mind how to put down a story on paper with ash".
Both Wayne and Horace are worried that they "are getting lighter" of skin by being too long in Sydney. Wayne flashes out his hands to prove it. Pale intrusions of caucasia spider his black veins. I warn that it won't be long before people think I'm the Aboriginal and he's the white man.
It's the day after a giant party celebrating Ben and Tom's birthdays. My old two-storey house shook to a freshly recorded tape by Sunrize that would be going to air the following Monday on JJJ-FM's Live at the Wireless. Two hundred people in a shambling Surry Hills terrace that felt like it could burst its seams. Black, white, old, young ... the whole world felt like it had poured in, including a ballet dancer from the United States (how'd he get here?) and two cool young cops trying to do their job, half-amused at my garbled promises and lies about when the night might end. Blasts of didgeridoo and clapsticks rang in the birthdays, with James Brown and The Cruel Sea and CAAMA tapes like the North Tanami Desert Band keeping the stereo throbbing through the early morn, the crackle of the fire roaring us on. One thousand beer bottles and cigarette stubs the next day.
And so it is that the whole week has rolled over me and keeping a diary has fallen a poor second to just keeping up. But Horace, casually wise, hears a song with kooky whistling on the radio and turns it up for my pleasure as much as his: Don't Worry, Be Happy.
"Hey, I love this song," he says smiling. "I put it on every morning for my children to get up to. They love it. They get up really good, straightaway. It's like magic."
ALAN MURPHY, YOTHU YINDI'S SOMETIME DRUMMER, CALLS IN AT THE HOUSE. The boys are nearly all asleep for the afternoon, though Horace wanders around and slumbers and moves again and again, well-tanked again on a fresh round of late morning beers or "gun-bung" as Wayne would say. How perfect – the word for beer in Gun Air rhymes with "gone bung!"
Wayne wakes up and starts quizzing Alan about the fact he is drumming for both Yothu Yindi and the Territory's great musical secret, Blak Bela Mujik, a melodically more interesting band without the same organisational push or as focused a frontman as Mandawuy Yunipingu.
Wayne is wondering if not being a full-time member of Yothu Yindi worries Alan. Wayne also wants to know how much Alan gets paid a night as a contracted employee of the band. A black American who once worked as an in-house studio producer for EMI's publishing division, Alan has an attitude of bold confidence lightly fractured by self-consciousness. In other words, there's a likeable chink in the chrome, and he deals with Wayne's questions generously, parrying the more specific one on wages. Finally the dawn comes when Wayne's circumlocutions lead on to even heavier hints. Alan realises that Wayne is trying to ask him if he would play back-up for him in Sunrize if he ever got ill, suggesting he would do the same for Alan if he couldn't make a gig with Yothu Yindi or Blak Bela Mujik. Not a bad trade from Wayne's point of view.
In the meantime, Horace flits around the conversation, five minutes behind it or echoing something somebody has said before dropping off again into a slumber. Ya gotta laugh.
Before everyone fell into their rock'n'roll snooze for the afternoon, we had watched a lunchtime video with Val Kilmer and Sam Shepherd called Thunderheart. A thriller set in native American Indian lands, it especially caught Wayne's interest, with its themes of land respect, dreaming knowledge, the modern world versus the ancient, and some real footage of a community not unlike an Aboriginal one: a vision of wiped-out suburbia, half-functional, dulled by a spacious inertia, powder-keg poverty and bored, drifting, unempowered people.
"This is now?" Wayne kept repeating to me. "Now in America?"