Bread and Water

By Nicholas Allbrook

I heard Darrigah coming, the little slap of his thongs on his heels cushioned by the very dry dust. Any noise stood out like dog balls in the vast empty silence of Jarlmadangah Burru, a remote aboriginal community in the Kimberleys, about 80ks inland from Derby. It was silent all day, but the morning silence was very special, before the sweet birdsong was strangled by the angry midday heat.

I had been waiting for Darrigah for five days without much idea of when he’d turn up. His daughter had given me a pretty vague answer - he was in Bidyadangah or Mowumjum or something - and would be back ‘later’. I’d been in the city for too long. Travelling in the world of clocks and automation. I’d forgotten Kimberley time.

I kicked the footy with some of the kids. They rapped, and then did backflips off a big pile of sand - both were awesome. I watched a shitty movie then settled into the guest house, melting, going between listening to the silence and reading Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot.

I was making pretty good friends with Gilot, and even better friends with silence, which, turns out, isn’t silent at all. It’s birds and insects and leaves and the infuriating whine of mosquitos. When Darrigah finally came lumbering to the door of the guest house, I was very excited.

“Boogoo! You awake?”

He opened the fly screen, his white beard barely covering a wide grin.

“You wanna go hunting, young fella?”
I fumbled and stammered like Hugh Grant, taken aback by the spontaneity. Too long in the city.

“Thats ok! You have some brekky then we’ll go catch a feed”

He shuffled off, skinny legs balancing the massive barrel of muscle that was his upper torso.

After a cup of tea I waited for him to come get me. I waited and waited, Picasso philandered across the dusty mantlepiece of history, while Gilot dusted it clean. The birds stopped, the sun rode across the sky, and I prepared to lie down for another five days. But soon, Darrigah returned as if nothing had happened with the engine rumbling outside. I ran out and hopped into his troopie.

The first stop was a wide floodplain where a whole mob were sitting on the banks throwing nets out to catch jilgies. Jilgies are a sort of small lobster looking thing that you can find in still, fresh water, like the kind that builds up on the side of the road after a really big rain.

This floodplain was full of them.

We’d picked up an old bloke on the way who was really good at fishing. He didn’t say much, and when he did it was in Nyikina. He moved slowly and was very skinny, but when he held the big weighted jilgie-net his little kangaroo arms pulsed with sinewy muscles and he waded through the water like a brolga, casting the net wide and graceful as a twirling ball gown. When he was done he passed it to me and I just about fell into the water. It was so heavy with moisture and the weights. I dragged it out a bit, tip-toeing awkwardly, and threw a shitty cast. A complete, tangled flop. Everyone had a good laugh and I sat down trying to look cool.

Darrigah told me the Nyikina people used to walk straight across the floodplain and it was a very important route to other communities and camps, but then the gardiya (non-aboriginal person) came and tried to divert the course of Mardoowarra, the Fitzroy River, to try start up giant rice fields. This was to be the biggest agricultural undertaking in the Southern Hemisphere at the time and, of course, it didn’t work. So they hurt Mardoowarra, wiped out a critical thoroughfare for the locals, then buggered off, leaving in their wake a flooded plain.

We kept driving, looking out for ducks, but there were none. Darrigah shook his head sadly. It was all different, all changed.

“Aaah well, bread and water tonight, boogoo”, he said.

He kept saying this, shaking his head, until we rolled into a small station on the way back. He took me into the general store and pointed at the bain marie, “what you want young fella?”

I scanned the peeling, faded menu hanging over the cashiers head. Chicken burger. Steak burger. Burger with the lot. I told Darrigah I wasn’t really hungry and he looked back at me like I’d just told him I was pregnant. He looked me up and down - skin and bones - then gave me a wry smile like he’d just gotten the joke. He turned to the young woman behind the bain marie and ordered a Fisherman's basket and family chips.

“You can share with me boogoo”

When she stated the price he said he’d pay later. She wasn’t sure about this at all, her eyes darting around evasively, probably not wanting to be rude to a senior citizen. He kept needling her, playing, his cheeky kid eyes trying to catch hers.

“Where are you from?” she asked

Darrigah jumped back and looked around to the invisible audience, a pantomime of outrage, “Where am I from? Where are you from?!”

The young lady looked quite panicked, the old man's finger pointed squarely at her chest, the question hanging like a thunderstorm in the kiosk. Just as she looked ready to burst into tears or call the cops, Darrigah broke into one of his signature cackles.

“You right young one, where’s Kathy? Grab the old girl”, he smiled gently and she went to fetch her boss, who came back and greeted Darrigah warmly.

She explained that he was a very important elder, a boss of the land, and he wouldn’t be paying for food.

As we drove back towards the station, me in the passenger seat with a Fisherman's basket in my lap, grease burning my thighs and a 22 pointed down past my right foot, Darrigah kept lamenting the lack of duck in the country, muttering “bread and water tonight” in between mouthfuls of chips and deep fried prawns and crab sticks.

Suddenly two great big emu’s exploded from the bush and started running in front of the ute. They do this, get locked into the road, too petrified of their hunter to break off into the cover of trees. Darrigah yelled and whooped.

“Gimme that gun boogoo! Grab the wheel!”

“I can’t bloody drive!” I replied

“Bullshit!”

“I can’t drive!!”

“Fuck.”

The old man grabbed the rifle in his right hand and leant out the window, steering the car with his left, taking aim and navigating the bumps in the busted up dirt road, trying to get a steady shot. The emu suddenly broke off to the left and started running along right beside my passenger side window. Darrigah whipped the rifle inside and aimed it at them, the barrel almost touching my nose. I blocked my ears,

“No no no no no!” I yelled.

Old man hesitated, remembering me, and in that tiny moment the emu turned sharply and charged through the fence to our left and scrambled back into the bush.

Darrigah slid the rifle back into the car and handed it to me, the safety latched. We sat back in silence staring at the road. I felt terrible. Terribly, terribly useless. Can’t drive, can’t shoot, scared of guns. JR, Darrigahs grandson, had killed a croc the other day with a rock. Useless bloody gardiya. Darrigah shot me a glance as if hearing my brain whirring. He smiled gently and grabbed my shoulder, looking at me through his thick cloudy cataracts.

“Don’t worry, boogoo! Next time. Big feed.”
I grunted. We drove on. The sun was setting and the bush was turning orange.

“We shoulda gone looking for him though”, the old man said after a few minutes, “that was barbed wire and he might have cut his neck anyway! Poor fella.”

I thought about the birds lying in the bush, dying slowly.

“Ee right though. Bread and water tonight, boogoo.”