Archive Box – No. 3

Tony Birch evokes the spirit of William Barak, painter, leader, Wurundjeri Elder

‘My Words’, Beruk-Ngamajet—1835 

Captain Cook marched—

in jacket and brass button 

Buckley stood ragged

in possum skin at Muddy Creek 

Batman came looking 

with glass, beads, powder

and mirrors in a wooden boat 

around the sea 

 

Buckley spoke his old tongue— 

the visitor is not ghost

he is not ghost

look at Batman’s face 

do not touch his skin 

his bread or his house 

do not touch his house 

 

Beruk spoke the truth— 

whitefellow shoot us 

down like kangaroo 

whitefellow come 

by and by

and shoot us 

shoot us down 

 

whitefellow come 

and shoot us down 

Coranderrk—1866 

(i)

30 April 1866

[Cost of acquiring land from and incarcerating ‘the blacks’]

Flour    108,610 lbs.

Tea    2,991 lbs.

Sugar    28,617 lbs.

Tobacco    1,983 lbs.

Rice    3,024 lbs.

Oatmeal    450 lbs.

Soap    3,181 lbs.

Meat    787 lbs.

Blankets    1,175 pairs.

Serge Shirts    548

Twill Shirts    464

Jumpers (boys)    183

Petticoats    424

Chemises    111

Tomahawks    142

Pint Pots    180

Quart Pots    100

‘The condition of the station is eminently satisfactory.’ 

(ii)

And in that year the Protector celebrated before God and Queen. He rejoiced with ink—’The blacks have become, if not civilised, very interesting, social and industrious.’ They have decorated the tolerably well-furnished, neatly swept, and very comfortable huts with pictures taken from the London Illustrated News. ‘Here,’ proclaimed the Protector, pointing a finger in the direction of the gates of Buckingham Palace, ‘your mother, the Queen of Victoria, she watches over you.’ And that night the Protector wrote ‘they are no longer savages’. 

(they have become)

seven children reading simply and clearly 

fourteen males and four females

taking lessons from the bible

fifteen boys and eleven girls

at study in the schoolhouse 

 

(they have become)

three bullocks, five cows and one calf 

seven acres of land fenced in

two acres of oat and three of potatoes 

 

(they are now) 

six huts built 

diligent subjects 

dutiful souls 

 

(they are)

working men receiving each week

sugar, 2 lbs

tea, 3 oz

flour, 5 lbs

tobacco, 1 fig.

(they are additionally several deceased natives, including some children.) 

We rejoice, in conclusion, that in this Year of The Lord (1866), William Barak of the Yarra Yarra tribe, married Annie, of the Lower Murray in a Christian ceremony. 

Coranderrk—1881

And so William was put on a coach for Melbourne, carrying his son, David, in his arms. When they arrived at Richmond they were left to themselves—in the dark and cool, and late into the night. William arrived with nothing—was left with nothing. He carried the boy to his heart through the streets where heavy brick and stone denied the footsteps of William’s father, and the footsteps of his own childhood. David clung to his father, William’s love stayed with his son—until he fell. And when the boy was dead William returned to Coranderrk alone. He arrived ‘home’ to the manager’s welcome of dry bread, weak tea and the Bible. In the following year William appeared before the governors. He told them the story of his own people. He told the story of his loved son, David. When his testimony had ended all that they could bother to ask, these sombre-suited civil servants, was ‘Was this a wild country when you were born?—Are you too old to work?—[and] Do you have undershirts provided each year?’ William did not know his age, but was sure that he had worked hard for these men—all to build his own house of freedom. His wife was dead. His son—dead. The Protectors knew nothing of the boy, who was now with William— David’s skin with William’s skin—his name murmured a song on William’s lips—his spirit ebbing through the body of his father.

‘Painting by King Billy: Last of the Yarra Tribe’—1890

William paints with a soft voice. He paints with indigo, rouge and charcoal. He paints the emu, the serpent, dancing men, the women in cloaks. William paints for God. He witnesses the future and paints the past for a shadow with the name Private Collection. He paints for the glass and stone temples of the city. William rests his paintbrush awhile and poses in a starched white suit—William resting with hands in pockets. The caption reads: ‘William, the friend of the white men— with white men friends, all smiling too’. William hunts. William dances. William tells his story. Listen to him: 

I will be all gone 

all gone soon

I will be gone 

And then William becomes gone. Beruk sheds his white suit, discards his brush, his indigo, rouge and charcoal. As the city sleeps Beruk walks away, leaving the spirit of William behind. The colony mourns him dead—William Barak—’the last of his tribe’. William no more. He is Beruk. And he is here. 

Beruk watches Melbourne from the sky—1945

Half the world is a bombsite—the spoils of liberation. A is for Amen and V is for victory, signalled to those on the move—searching for the dead—seeking a home among the ruins. H is for the Holocaust and Hiroshima. H is for hydrogen—a civilised solution for disorder. All are equal before the bomb, but the burning flesh of Europe and Asia does not smoulder in Batmania. Ours is a city of cold light and dead shadows. Tombstone towers reach for the sun, casting their darkened skeletal frames over fields of gold reduced now to a sludge of shifting grey. The veins of the city are empty and still. Beruk follows the story of his footsteps, away from the temples to the ground of Coranderrk. He looks for his people—toiling in the shadow, they have become shadows also. He looks for his father. He looks for his son. Beruk searches for William, who comes to him in his white suit. ‘It is not time,’ William tells him. ‘When the bed of the river rises to meet us, it will be time.’ 

Beruk visits the riverbed—2005

Beruk moves quietly through the canyons of the city—all is stone still now. He passes the winking lights—imitating life. He listens for machines grinding to failure. Beruk observes his reflection in the flaws of glass, now inhabited by the petrified few. Women offer themselves. Men spit abuse. While dead children drift silently by, on a journey from the river to the ocean. Beruk slips into the water, beneath the heavy metals—the leaching arsenic, iron oxides, poisons and the death throes of toxic fish. Below the monster hulls of ships the current carries Beruk onward and down, to where the riverbed of the Wurundjeri awaits his return. Beruk calls into the darkness—singing his travels until his feet meet the floor of 100,000 lives once lived. In the beauty and blackness of the riverbed Beruk greets his son, David. He then greets his father—the Ngamajet. They sing, feet raising a rhythm of shifting earth: 

we will be gone 

all gone soon

we will be gone 

and we will come 

we will come 

and be 

 

we will be 

Image: Carl Walter/CC0 1.0/State Library of Victoria via Wikimedia Commons