I owe my existence as do hundreds related to me to an old Wiradjuri woman known by the family ascribed name Bessie

I owe my existence as do hundreds related to me to an old Wiradjuri woman known by the family ascribed name Bessie, who came to warn my GG Grandmother at Gobarralong in1852 the Murrumbidgee flood was to rise much further and faster than previously experienced. “Missus…Get up hill, fast”, she insisted they must leave immediately to higher ground to save her 10 children with one on the way, two dogs, a cat, a cow, and a horse. It was said my GG Grandmother “had been on the Murrumbidgee for ten years. They knew you had to trust the aborigines. Especially about the weather and the river.” They took what they could in a wheelbarrow and a bucket of hot coals. Through the darkening drizzling sky, ankle deep in squelching mud, apart from a toddler being dropped twice, “Blessed Mary!”, “Holy Mother of God!”, grabbed, “Thank God!” in a flowing waist deep creek crossing they made it to high ground. The house was washed away. GG grandfather who had gone to Gundagai approximately 54 kilometres down river to buy supplies never returned. GG Grandmother heard the bad news shouted across the river of his death some weeks after in the flood. Wiradjuri men Yarri and Jacky Jacky saved 68 people, one third of the Gundagai’s population in the same flood.

 

This story is of aboriginals protecting the lives of colonialists. But this was not one way in the same Murrumbidgee river area colonialists sought to protect aboriginals from each other, if one reads the complete account of the excerpt below claims the indigenous condition were not significantly improved by the colonialist arrival and subsequent events, though cathartic, are particularly absurd. The full text highlights the profound policy-resource difficulties regards prevention of aboriginals harming each other and instilling a code of behaviour which would increasingly mean such actions would not occur and enable Indigenous peoples to take advantage of the changes pushing forward into modernity. Resulting in many represented as equal citizens in the highest political offices of the Nation.

 

“Sixty Years Ago

LIFE ON THE MURRUMBIDGEE

BLACKS AND FLOODS

OLD WOMANS INTERESTING STORY

I recollect the last big fight between the tribes. An old man named Billy Pemberton was walking down our main street early one morning when a mob of strange blacks accosted him with, ‘’Where blackfellow camped?’’. Billy directed them the wrong way and ran and warned the local tribe. A lot of them raced to our place for shelter. My husband was away at the time-only myself and two babies were in the house. I let a couple of blackfellows in and they got under the bed. Others planted in the outhouse; in Turnbull’s store in Lindley's yard and one got under a cask. But he forgot his dog, which started scratching outside the barrel and when the “invaders” came along the dog's antics directed their attention to the barrel and they hauled out the planted man, and I don’t think there was an inch of his body into which they did not put spears.”
TROVE: Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga, NSW : 1911 - 1954) Sat 18 May 1912 Page 3 Sixty Years Ago.

 

What do both stories mean. All of us in any colonisation lose something of great value we can never bring back and if we try it invariably informs more grief and schism. Each side is not a pristine victim or perpetrator but they are also stories of empathy, trust, gratitude which did exist between two peoples who not only could work together but felt it their duty to do so. Some culture ideologies at their core are significantly different as we see with the extreme violence, they commit systemically against each other and Other. This I believe of both people above have shown the potential to forge a great nation together rather than one splintered apart by one side or other claiming victimhood,  greater ownership, institutionalised power than other citizens in the same landscape, socialscape.