Dhanggal Bawagal: Mussel Sisters – by Michelle Vlatkovic
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
Long before Jesus, my family always travelled from Biridja when it was warm but not hot. When the chill had begun to melt away from the days and the mornings had no frost, Yulawirri’s family walked from Weetalabah Creek.
We all camped with other clans by the Baawan at Burriiwarranha. My mother prepared fish our way, pulling out the guts and covering the outside with mud. Yulawirri’s mother worked her flour into damper with water. Ready for the fire, they dug a hole then buried the food in hot coals. We ate as the sun went down.
After the food, our mothers placed possum skin cloaks over their knees, tucking the cloaks tightly around the back of their legs with the fur against their bare skin. Their palms beat. They sang as they drummed the pelts.
Now I hear them, close to gali (water), in the long afternoon. Soft voices, that mingle on the gentle breeze.
Yuli-gi, Yuli-gi, Dhanggaal bawagal
Yuli-gi, Yuli-gi, Dhanggaal bawagal
The last night was always sad, knowing it would be a while until we met again: when it was again warm but not hot, when the chill had begun to melt away from the days and the mornings had no frost.
By the Myall Waterholes, campfire smoke is white and thick as damp leaves burn. Our mothers and aunts work together in the shade, talking a little, smiling a lot. Busy hands use twine to tie together sticks, making the frames. Other hands use dhanggal shells to scrape stray bits of tissue left on the pelts. Twelve pelts are attached to the frames with make-do pegs and left to dry in the sun.
A pelican glides above water landing on the opposite bank. Like others before, I stand on the outer bank on sand tempered by the sun. Myall and a line of proud red river gums hold the shade on the banks. At water’s edge the stones are smooth underfoot.
Yulawirri wades into the water to collect dhanggal. Her mother calls out.
‘Come on,’ she says wanting me to follow. ‘The biggest ones are over there.’
She is pointing towards the long reeds.
Her mother calls out to us. The last word I hear is ‘deeper’. Then I’m diving down into clear water where the dhanggal, humble, pretend to be stones. They are sediment dwellers.
My head surfaces. I see the Glass House Mountains. To my left is the bridge between Bribie Island and the mainland. The Passage is the waterway between the mainland and the island. To the south, at Sandstone Point, it opens to Redland Bay. The northerly tip of the island almost touches Caloundra where the passage opens to the ocean.
It is 2020.
On the shore, close to an ancient midden, Dianne Yulawirri Hall sits on an old sleeping bag I carry in the boot of my car. We met each other in this life cycle where the Namoi and the Barwon used to meet, at Walgett, the Easter weekend of 2019. Gali brought us both to a women’s gathering. Over one hundred women from different clans came to talk gali, to better understand our responsibilities and experience. Walgett had no water because of the drought. We gathered to find a way forward. Di set up her nylon gunyah next to mine.
Di remembers before the bridge was built from Sandstone Point linking Bribie Island to the mainland. She recalls being less than five years old in Bongaree Park, watching the ferry trafficking over day trippers and holiday makers from Redcliffe. Childhood here was fishing and crabbing this side of the island, and days in the surf at Woorim, commuting everywhere on a push-bike. Since then, the island has become busier with more people moving here and visiting each year.
Di grew up at Woorim in foster care on the ocean side of Bribie Island in a house on the beach. Her foster Mum, Dawn, welcomed Di into her family, as though she was her own. Years later, Di returned as a single mum and raised four kids here.
Bribie reminds me of Ettalong and Umina. There are still small boxy fibro houses along long flat streets. Most of the islanders used to be working-class families and retirees until developers cleared mangroves to build the flash houses along the creek in the nineties. Bigger houses went up on the bayside down at Woorim. On The Passage, more low-rise units went up.
They say you are either a freshwater or saltwater Mari. Is it as simple as that? We have always spent time by our waterways, wherever we are as Aboriginal people on a hot continent.
For Di and myself, Thursdays together are one long afternoon to weave and swim, make fire for damper or to smoke ourselves on these shores. Our days flow on deep conversations about our family histories, our cultural learning, sense of identity and engagement as creators. On one of these days of salt and sand, grappling with big ideas, she tells me she found a poem from Oodgeroo Noonnuccal, one that speaks to her own approach of art making and learning.
‘In the new Dreamtime there lived a woman, an Aborigine, who longed for her lost tribe and for the stories that had belonged to her people; for she could remember only the happenings of her own Dreamtime.’[i]
I think of the possum skin cloak I have been working on these past few years, a cloak of my own dreaming.
‘Around twenty-five years ago,’ Di continues, ‘I attended a funeral on Country and was introduced to an Aunty on my father’s side of the family. She knew I grew up off Kamilaroi Country on Gubbi Gubbi Country. This Aunty saw I was searching for my belonging and my place and she told me a story about two mussels. The mussels clung to the side of the riverbank. A big storm came and the current got stronger. Each mussel was a sister from fresh water. The current carried off one sister, taking her away from Country.’
Looking out towards the water, listening to this story, I smile and turn to Di.
‘Mussel sisters. I love it.’
‘This story is our story,’ she says. ‘Detached from homelands, our learning is our way home.’
Over one hundred women at the gathering and this is who camps beside me. We met in 2019, but I would say our friendship and connection goes back many, many life cycles.
Dhanggal tell our story. Different from other mussels, floodplain mussels avoid strong flowing rivers. They prefer areas where boulders and partially submerged trees slow down the water, where the banks of the waterway are dense with matt rush. Like us, they like the sheltered areas. Temporary creeks and waterholes are favoured as the stream bed is stable. Dhanggal live their first two years on the bed feeding on sediment.
In the larval stage, dhanggal rely on fish, attaching themselves to gills and fins. Now, fish movements along the streams and rivers are restricted by dams and weirs. Poor habitat and silted streams are also affecting dhanggal health. Their populations have become smaller, fragmented and isolated from one another because of settler intervention along our waterways.
Same time, the arrival of the settlers also changed freshwater people’s lives. Respected voices were silenced and choked from speaking our language, removal severed relationships in families and our people faced uncertain futures as our knowledge of Country was usurped for the wealth and interests of the colonial project.
Small, isolated dhanggal groups have a higher risk of diminishing than unfragmented populations. Likewise, dhanggal bawagal are better together than apart. We need to be grounded in safe, nurturing places with our own.
On my last visit home, my cousin Roslyn Sampson, who grew up at Breeza, takes me to visit her brother Kevin for a cuppa. Then we go to the family graves at the cemetery, before looking around Breeza station, the woolsheds, the old gaol. Standing on higher ground overlooking the river, Ros points to where the bank drops away like mini cliffs near the bridge over the Mooki.
‘The erosion has got so bad over there,’ she says.
‘Is this where you swam as kids?’
‘Not me. I loved being in the shallows there under the bridge when the river was high. But I hated getting my head wet or underwater. Swimming wasn’t my thing. I remember Dad showing us the creek area and how the water would filter over the rocks. And he would tell us where it was safe for us to have a drink, which we did on hot days. He would dig in the mud for the crabs and big long worms and small ones. Funny when you are little, you would touch anything.’
‘Dad and my brother used to throw out a net. They’d bring home mullet, catfish and yellow belly too. When we were little there were cod and perch. We would have fish and Johnny cakes. We lived off the land pretty good. We had to.’
‘What about mussels?’
‘Yes. Don’t remind me. I still remember the funky odour of a bucket of them left in the sun on a hot day with no water. Could never try them after that. What about you?’
‘I’m kind of repulsed at the idea of the textures in my mouth. Not for me. How did they catch them?’
‘They would come up in the fish net. Dad and Pop used to make the nets and they made traps to catch crawbobs.’
‘Amazing, my grandfather was the same; loved to fish and crab. It is kind of sad how, although we grew up apart, the good times looked so alike with our parents and grandparents.’
‘Yeah. I wish they could have all met.’
Ros retrieves her phone from her bag.
‘I want to show you this article I found,’ she says tapping on her phone.
She pulls up a 1922 news article from Newcastle’s Sun newspaper: ‘Black Gin’s Washing Day.’
‘Mrs Davis lived on a station at Breeza Plains and had some black men and women working for her. Each Monday was washing day, and the black women helped with the washing. Each would take her pile down to the nearby river called the “Mucki” and wait until word was given to start. With that they would dive into the river, clothes and all. They used to shake one another’s soap and throw it into the water, for the owner to dive in and get it again. When the “missus” (as they called her) gave the command again, they would get waist deep in water and get to work with soap until the next signal was given to rinse. Then they would all dive to the bottom, taking down the clothes also. The next signal was given, to wring and spread them out to dry on the grass and then there would be an interval for dinner, which consisted of damper and treacle. In the afternoon the clothes would be dry, and gathered for ironing. The black women being quite pleased with their day’s work.’[ii]
‘It would have been freezing in winter,’ Ros says.
It’s true. Nothing like the cheerful, soapbox, whitewashed history depicted in the article. Life under Protection: rations and restrictions. I remember my Aunty Fran telling me her mum took on a flood in Walgett to rescue her and her sister as kids. It would have been the late 1940s. I tell Ros the story.
‘No wonder Great Aunty Cath was such strong swimmer. Never had a formal lesson in her life.’
We are water spirits, always close to gali in different presents across time. We are dhanggal bawagal, floodplain mussel sisters. Water ways are our ways. Learning and socialising has always been done by our rivers: by the Gwydir, the Namoi and the Barwon, by the Mooki and Mehi, along the Peel, Darling and McIntyre, at waterholes and creeks. For thousands of years, we have camped close to water sources and have sacred places along the river tributaries of Kamilaroi Country.
Along the riverbanks, elders show children plant uses and their seasons. Flowing rivers with plentiful birds and wildlife are a living classroom to learn their habits and tracks. These are the veins of Country, gali its sacred blood. This life force powers Gunnima’s gii, mother earth’s heart.
It’s forty-five degrees. There’s no way Aunty is leaving the air-conditioning. I want to go down to a sandy beach on the McIntyre River between Boggabilla and Goondiwindi and get into the water, and Di knows there’s no way to say no. We’ve been talking about it for months on Bribie. Flat water, muddy, thick to move through but great to fish.
We get into the car with our togs and a hand-line. It’s not far down the road. We pull off onto a dirt drive through paddocks. It hasn’t been mown. The road winds across the field, then becomes a track only fit for dirt bikes.
We park. I open my car door. Discarded KFC boxes lie in the long grass. We follow an unkempt path shaded by tall trees. On the riverbank is a lush grassy slope then a sandy beach. There’s an awful stink.
‘What is that?’
A moment later, I almost step on it. In the unmown grass, a very large, bloated carp, rotting.
‘Fisheries department won’t let you throw them pests back in the river.’ Di pauses to take in the view of the splendid sandy beach. ‘It’s a little something to keep the out-of-towners away bawa.’
I can’t get to the water’s edge fast enough. A few metres across the sand, we drop our bags, take off our shoes and step into the water. Brown the colour of milky tea, it smells like fertilizer and pasture. The current moves very fast in the centre of the river. I hesitate in running in.
‘Na. I’m not wading out there.’ I feel a little deflated.
‘Yeah. One of us or both of us be pulled away.’
We sit down in the shallows, our legs extended.
The opposite riverbank is an exposed wall of white ochre.
‘Look at that.’
Further along the sand lies an enormous rivergum trunk, obviously washed up on the last flood.
‘There would be submerged logs out there for sure.’
I roll over in fifteen centimetres of water, pushing myself out enough to lie there and get my hair wet. Sitting back up, the air against my rash vest suspends the heat. While the river is tepid and sun unrelenting, we are comfortable. My feet rest on the sandy bottom. I feel something touching against my foot and then…
‘Crawbob just bit my f’ing…’
Di is out of the water before I say, ‘toe.’ She starts to laugh. I start to laugh.
‘What a sight we must be for anyone over there,’ she says pointing across the river.
We start to walk barefoot up the beach, then realise this isn’t a good idea.
There are broken bottles, the sand is hot. We are on our tip toes laughing. I go back to grab my thongs.
I’m walking back towards her.
She calls out, ‘Looky, how good is this?’
She holds up a mussel shell.
‘See, we meant to come down here today,’ I yell.
‘There are lots. Dhanggal everywhere,’ she squeals.
Four white butterflies bounce up and down, flying around her as she picks up shells. She uses the front of her singlet as a pouch, dropping the shells inside. As Di walks out towards the tree trunk and begins to arrange the empty shells the butterflies are still with her. She washes the shells, their outsides dark black with bits of gold shimmering when they are wet, pearly on the inside.
The sun blazes above, and like brolga, Di balances on one leg holding her own mobile phone taking photos.
The dance of the dhanggal bawagal is sideways, balancing, not scaring the dancing butterflies, white and yellow, that bob around Di and her phone. And I think of us coming home sideways towards the group, trying to tread softly with our big feet, our authenticity sometimes making us a little clumsy. We do not pretend. It is not in our nature. Our moves come from that dhanggal bawagal spirit. They are a little rusty because we have been separated from one another and Country.
Dhanggal bawagal. We are better together than apart. We share the stories of the waterways where we have been. For the ones that come after us. Our work is to sing what we know and remember of Country and place over successive presents, over thousands of years. This has my focus and attention. This is the work that brings us together.
* Aunty Bernadette Duncan, Kamilaroi Elder and linguist, provided advice on Kamilaroi language usage for this work.
[i] Martin, Karen (2008) Please knock before you enter: Aboriginal regulation of outsiders and the implications for researchers p.37
[ii] Stone (1922) ‘Black Gin’s Washing Day’ The Sun July 30 1922 p.3 ▼
Image: Andy Castille - Unsplash
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